ESRC DTP Strategic Joint Studentship: Adopting a Research-Informed Approach to Develop Play Interactions to Improve Executive Functions in Neurotypical and Neurodiverse Families.

The Midlands Graduate School is an accredited Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). One of 15 such partnerships in the UK, the Midlands Graduate School is a collaboration between the Universities of Warwick, Birmingham, Nottingham, Aston Leicester, Loughborough, De Montfort and Nottingham Trent.

We are now inviting applications for an ESRC Strategic Joint Studentship between University of Nottingham (where the student will be registered) and the University of Birmingham to commence in October 2026.

Executive functions and attentional control skills emerge as early as 6 months of age, dynamically change across early childhood, and are influenced by caregiver involvement and the home environment. These abilities are sculpted by characteristics of parent-child interactions such as type of play contexts, type of objects used, and spatio-temporal behavioural and brain dynamics. For example, infant visual short-term memory is associated with the extent of infant object engagement and caregiver scaffolding during interactions with high cognitive load multicomponent objects (e.g. stacking tower, sorting box), but not low cognitive load single objects (e.g., car, cup), as well as to brain activation in infants during periods of joint attention with their caregivers. These findings could inform play-based interventions to promote executive function development. However, to be most effective, targeted research is necessary to investigate and translate these findings for neurotypical as well as neurodiverse families with a connection to autism or ADHD, as these children are at risk for executive function difficulties. The proposed project aims to address this by leveraging existing caregiver-child interactions and executive function data from two separate studies conducted in Nottingham, Oxford and Southampton – NeuroSync, a longitudinal behavioural and neuroimaging dataset of 100 neurotypical families – and START, a longitudinal behavioural dataset of 110 neurodiverse families (with and without a family history of autism or ADHD). The successful candidate will create an inclusive neurodiversity-affirming coding scheme to code caregiver-child behaviours, examine brain function during caregiver-child interactions, apply statistical models to examine developmental changes from infancy to toddlerhood and predictive links to outcomes, and finally, develop materials to support caregivers in scaffolding children’s engagement during play interactions in both neurotypical and neurodiverse families. Candidates must have a strong academic background in psychology, cognitive neuroscience or a related field. Experience with conducting research with families with children, applying coding schemes to interaction data, brain imaging analyses, and/or programming with MATLAB are desirable but not essential skills.

Application Process

To be considered for this PhD, please complete the Strategic Joint Studentship application form available online via the 'Apply' button above. Applicants will be required to upload an anonymised CV, anonymised cover letter, and transcripts as part of the online application process.

Application deadline: 18^th February 2026

Midlands Graduate School ESRC DTP

Our ESRC studentships cover fees at the home rate, a maintenance stipend, and extensive support for research training, as well as research activity support grants. Support is available to both home and international applicants. For further details, visit: www.mgsdtp.ac.uk/studentships/eligibility/.

Informal enquiries about the research prior to application can be directed to Dr. Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar (sobanawartiny.wijeakumar@nottingham.ac.uk).

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