Elizabeth Kirk

Liz Kirk is a lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of York. Her main research interests are gesture and parent-child interaction.

She completed her first degree in Cognitive Science at the University of Hertfordshire and stayed in Hertfordshire to complete an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology and a PhD in Developmental Psychology (thesis entitled ‘The Impact of Encouraging Infants to Gesture on Their Language Development’). After completing an ESRC funded post-doc, she was appointed as Lecturer in Developmental Psychology and then Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. Elizabeth joined York in 2014.

She researches the role of nonverbal behaviours in parent-infant interaction and the impact on linguistic and socio-cognitive development. She also researches the development of symbolic abilities in infancy and the relationship between gesture, pretend play, mind-mindedness and theory of mind, and the role of children’s hand gestures in cognitive and linguistic processes, including creativity and spelling.