Dr Abigail Pickard
Research Fellow
Contact details
- Email: a.pickard@ed.ac.uk
- Web: My website
Address
- Street
-
School of Health in Social Science | The University of Edinburgh
2.05 | Wilkie Building - City
- Post code
- EH8 9AG
Background
I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Health in Social Sciences. I am currently working on my independent research investigating the development of eating trajectories in young children, please get in touch if you are keen to collaborate.
Responsibilities & affiliations
- Events officer UK Society for Behavioural Medicine Early Career Network.
- Affiliated researcher at Aston University on the APPETItE project.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
Masters supervision
Research summary
My overarching research interests are child psychology particularly eating behaviour and child development.
Current research interests
I am currently an independent research fellow in the School of Health in Social Science at the University of Edinburgh based at the Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Research. My research focuses on childhood eating behaviour trajectories using Latent Transition Analysis and assessing the behavioural and cognitive factors associated with persistent fussy eating behaviour.Past research interests
My previous position was a three-year postdoctoral role on the ESRC-funded grant APPETItE working with Prof. Jacqueline Blissett to investigate appetite and eating behaviours in preschoolers. My research examined feeding and eating in pre-schoolers with avid appetites, to understand children's differential susceptibility to obesogenic environments and inform future intervention efficacy. More specifically, my work on the project used applied methodologies such as Ecological Momentary Assessment, Latent Profile Analysis and feasibility lab-based studies. My PhD was conducted within the remit of the EDULIA project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The research objectives for the EDULIA project were to find new ways to tackle the escalating issue of obesity, through promoting healthier eating in childhood. Using several experimental studies, my PhD work enlightened the field of children's conceptual development by providing novel evidence of the understanding children obtain of food and food routines and the association with children's food rejection.Knowledge exchange
I was awarded a 6-month Visiting Student Researcher Fellowship from the France-Stanford Center in 2019. I had the pleasure of working with Prof. Ellen Markman on the BEETROOT: Addressing Barriers to Dietary Variety by Boosting Conceptual Knowledge about Food in Preschoolers project. During the research position, I designed, conducted, and analysed an experimental study with 45 children measuring their conceptual knowledge of food.