Virginia Lam

Accepting PhD Students

20012024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Biography

Virginia joined Roehampton in 2021. Her specialisms lie in social developmental psychology. Before joining Roehampton, she launched Growing up bilingual, an ESRC-funded research project (2018-22). The team collaborated with the Newham Partnership for Complementary Education/NPCE and the NRCSE, which oversaw heritage language school provisions. The project tracked social, cognitive and educational outcomes with language proficiency of bilingual children who had complementary language schooling and those who did not.

The Growing Up Bilingual research led to the 3-part GUB: Researcher-Practitioner Synergies series, which Virginia gained BPS funding to run (2021-22) after joining Roehampton. The series engaged academics and practitioners across sectors invested in supporting bilingual development and aided the next bid to Research England (Roehampton Seed Fund; Enhancing Research Culture path), which funded the project Becoming Bilingual: Funds of Knowledge from Learners, Educators and Providers across Sectors in 2023. BB involved learners, teachers and leaders in reciprocal peer observations and innovative networking for co-creation of funds of knowledge exchanged for enhancing language education.

The most recent offshoots from the GUB-BB projects are the 'Intergen' project 2023-4 (funded by Southlands Methodist Trust) and the Multilingual Emotional Support (MES) Programme (funder BIG South London). Intergen explores cross-generational changes in language use, identity and community needs in heritage language school communities, from the perspectives of students, alumni and long-serving teachers and leaders. MES is a collaborative intervention with the Family Emotional Wellbeing Project (FEWP) to investigate the language-related wellbeing needs, and growth through multilingual psychotherapy, of ESOL leaners (English for Speakers of Other Languages) for 2024-25.

Before the realms of bilingual development, Virginia's research focused on social identity (ethnic, gender, national and religious groups), intergroup processes, and their impact on psychological outcomes. She has expanded research in diversity issues, such as cross-cultural variations in social cognition, mixed/dual-heritage people's identity and adjustment (BPS-funded). Interdisciplinary collaboration includes with the Schools of Education (Wolfgang Mann; now U Cologne) and Arts (Eva Eppler) for the Climate Change Challenge project. With an external partner the 100-Word Challenge, they launched a 10-week 'challenge' for children to write 100-word narratives on a climate topic each week. The findings have been used to inform stakeholders on climate and sustainability education.

Virginia became the co-convenor for the BPS-accredited MSc Psychology in September 2021. She teaches both undergraduates and postgraduates (previously supervising the MA Integrative Counselling & Psychotherapy for Children, Adolescents & Families) including the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology (PsychD). She is a co-author of the textbook Developmental Psychology (two editions and an Italian edition) with the third edition launching in January 2025 (Pearson).

Apart from external consultancy and examining, Virginia is an Associate Editor for the journal Social Development (Wiley).

To contact Virginia, please email: [email protected]

Education/Academic qualification

Psychology, BA (Hons), Cardiff University

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education PGCert, University of East London

Psychological Research Methods, MSc, University of Exeter

Developmental Psychology, PhD, Developing ethnic identities in middle childhood, University of London (Goldsmiths)

External positions

Consultancy/education materials, Essex Police Fire and Crime Commissioner Fire and Rescue Authority

Masterclass contributor, REC Parenting Ltd

Associate Editor, Social Development

External Examiner, University of Greenwich

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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