Victoria Talwar is the Director of the Daniel and Monica Gold Centre for Early Childhood Development and a leading expert in children’s social-cognitive and moral development from the earliest years onward. With over two decades of research experience, she has examined how children understand, interpret, and respond to social information in diverse contexts—including honesty and deception, empathy and prosocial behavior, the challenges of children’s online engagement, and legal settings where children’s testimony and credibility are critical.

Dr. Talwar’s work integrates developmental science with real-world applications, informing educational practices, parenting strategies, legal procedures, and policy aimed at fostering children’s well-being both offline and in the digital world. She is recognized internationally for her contributions to understanding how early experiences—across physical, digital, and legal environments—shape lifelong social, emotional, and moral growth.

Sheryl Smith-Gilman has dedicated many years to ºÚÁÏÍø±¬³Ô¹Ï's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE), with a focus on enhancing teacher education. Her work addresses contemporary curriculum challenges and embraces diverse teaching methods and pedagogies. As a researcher, educator, and consultant, her efforts have concentrated on early childhood education, particularly in the realms of teaching and pedagogy. She is deeply committed to advancing the goals of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) by developing Indigenous knowledge and cultural approaches into early childhood education. Her work particularly emphasizes the arts as a means to enrich educational experiences and strengthen cultural identity.

In addition to her academic pursuits, she has served as a pedagogical consultant to the Quebec Ministry of Education, focusing on preschool education and is recognized as an authority on the approach in preschool settings. Sheryl Smith-Gilman's contributions to the field are reflected in several journal articles and book chapters that she has authored, which explore various aspects of her teaching and research interests.

Maija-Liisa Harju is a multidisciplinary scholar, educator, and consultant specializing in children’s literature, identities, and education. She has contributed to critical research initiatives focused on children’s and teacher education, including the Walking Alongside project (reconciliatory practices in teacher education), and Architecture Playshop (climate education through the built environment) at ºÚÁÏÍø±¬³Ô¹Ï.

Dr. Harju’s scholarship explores the transformative power of narrative and storytelling in shaping identity, memory, and emotional development. Her work highlights the pedagogical potential of story and play to help children engage with complex themes such as death and anxiety, intergenerational connections, and relationships with the natural world. In her role facilitating Gold Centre programs, Dr. Harju will continue to support children, families, and educators, and further explore the ways young children understand and story their experiences.

Gigi Luk and Armando Bertone: Professors Luk and Bertone will assess which online language assessment practices are appropriate for young multilingual learners with the goal of developing more accessible approaches that favour diverse and inclusive participation in research.

Tina Montreuil: Professor Montreuil will examine how parenting stress and emotion regulation mediate the relationship between parenting self-efficacy and quality, and underscores family well-being as a key predictor of child outcomes and the need for better family support.

Master of Arts

• Mira Bhattacharya: Bhattacharya focuses on understanding how music is experienced and used in the daily lives of autistic and non-autistic children, with the aim of supporting inclusive, strengths-based approaches to early childhood development.
• Alicia Martineau: Martineau analyzes longitudinal depressive and anxiety symptoms in mothers and fathers using subjective and objective sleep measures to understand the association between infant sleep and parental mental health in the perinatal period.
• Charlène Thauvin: Thauvin assesses cross-cultural differences in preschool napping practices and educators’ beliefs in Quebec and France, highlighting how sleep policies may reflect institutional and cultural norms more than children’s sleep needs.
• Karissa Vallera: Vallera examines the efficacy of a short-term, adapted CBT-I intervention to improve the sleep quality of children with autism and their family functioning.

PHD

• Andrew Burcar: Burcar investigates the psychosocial, contextual, and sociodemographic determinants of early paternal involvement from pregnancy through six months postpartum to understand how father engagement shapes infants’ social-emotional and cognitive development, maternal well-being, and early caregiving environments within the Canadian context.
• Gia Han Ly (Michelle): Ly analyzes the association between infant sleep, parental sleep and infant-parent interaction to further understand how infant sleep quality is associated with attachment and parental sensitivity.
• Maria Stergiou: Stergiou studies the role of pre-service teachers’ responses to children’s literature about diverse family structures using collage-making to understand pedagogy and educational strategies in early childhood education.
• Jingyi Wang: Wang assesses how parents’ multilingual practices shape young children’s early multilingual development, aiming to promote a healthy and inclusive home language environment.
• Stephanie Zito: Zito examines educator attitudes toward school-based mindfulness interventions to understand how teachers’ beliefs, perceptions, and training needs influence the implementation of school-based mindfulness practices that can enhance social-emotional development and learning outcomes for neurodiverse children in inclusive classrooms.
• Éric Papineau: Papineau explores the role of a single-session of mindfulness-based intervention in reducing parental burnout and strengthening emotion regulation and resilience. He seeks to understand how equipping caregivers with effective tools and enhancing their well-being can improve behavioural, emotional, and developmental outcomes in the lives of neurodiverse children and their families.

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