Virginia joined Roehampton in 2021. Her specialisms lie in social developmental psychology. Before joining Roehampton, she launched Growing up bilingual, an ESRC-fund Collaborative DTP 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 alongside the language proficiency of bilinguals who had complementary language schooling and those who did not.

The Growing Up Bilingual project 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 networks for co-creating funds of knowledge exchanged for enhancing language education.

The most recent projects are Intergen (2023-4; funded by Southlands Methodist Trust) and Multilingual Emotional Support (MES Programme; funder BIG South London). Intergen explores cross-generational changes in language practice, identity and community needs in heritage language school communities, from the perspectives of students, alumni and long-serving teachers/leaders. MES is a wellbeing promotion provided by the Family Emotional Wellbeing Project (FEWP) and explored the language-related mental health states and needs evaluated by ESOL leaners.

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, including cross-cultural variations in social cognition and mixed/dual-heritage people's identity and adjustment (BPS-funded). Interdisciplinary collaboration includes with Schools of Education (Wolfgang Mann; now U Cologne) and Arts (Eva Eppler) for the Climate Change Challenge project. Children from wrote over 1,000 100-word narratives over ten climate topics.

Virginia became the co-convenor for the BPS-accredited MSc Psychology in September 2021 and led the validation of the new MSc Developmental Psychology. She teaches undergraduates and postgraduates (including the Doctorate in Counselling Psychology; PsychD). She is a co-author of the book Developmental Psychology (2011, 2016 and 2013 Italian ed; Pearson), with its third edition launching in April 2025.

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

To contact Virginia, please email: [email protected]