Dr Anushay Mazhar

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
PhD

Academic and research departments

School of Psychology.

About

Anushay is a Research Fellow at the DfE-funded Educational Neuroscience Policy and Research Centre, which brings together academics from 9 universities across the UK and stakeholders from across the sector to translate scientific evidence from educational neuroscience into actionable policy and practice. Anushay will be working with Professor Emily Farran (University Surrey), Professor Paul Howard-Jones (University of Bristol), and Dr Rebecca Gordon (UCL) on the Workforce development strand, which will identify workforce priority needs and help communicate evidence-based insights from educational neuroscience to inspire and develop the workforce. 

Anushay completed her PhD at the University of Oxford's Department of Education (2022-25) where her research focused on investigating Pakistani children’s social-emotional development and how that relates to their academic skills and the classroom environment. For this, she received the Patrice Engle Dissertation Award from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). Following her PhD, Anushay was awarded the Sylva-Chan Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford, during which she worked on adapting the LangQuest, a self-audit tool to assess early years educators’ confidence in using practices to support children’s language and communication, to the Pakistani context. 

Anushay completed her BSc Psychology from UCL, where she also started her master’s in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology. She was based at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence for her master's thesis, which investigated children’s emotion development. Anushay’s research interests include understanding child development across the globe, factors that might be affecting it, and working with teachers to support children's development.

Publications

Peer-reviewed publications

  1. Mazhar, A., Ereky-Stevens, K., & Siraj, I. (2026). Quality of Early Childhood Education in Pakistan: Insights from Public, Private, and TCF Schools. International Journal of Educational Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2026.103620 
  2. Mazhar, A., & Sylva, K. (2025). Developing a Low-Resource, Evidence-Based Early Years Professional Development Programme Using Self-Assessment. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-025-01863-5 
  3. Mazhar, A., & Bailey, C., S. (2024). Understanding Children’s Emotion-Specific Biases: How They Relate to Child and Family Factors, Emotion Recognition Accuracy, and Social Behaviour. Cognition and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2408652

Reports

  1. Mazhar, A., Outhred, R., Bashir, M. S., & Marshall, L. (2026). Conducting assessments with infants and toddlers (birth to three years): User Guide. United Kingdom: Education Endowment Foundation.
  2. Bashir, M. S., Marshall, L., Mazhar, A., Pickenpack, A., Outhred, R., & Wishart, R. (2026). Update of the EEF’s Early Years Measures Database: Final Report. United Kingdom: Education Endowment Foundation.
  3. Mazhar, A. & Bury, J. (2026). Pilot Evaluation of the Early Skills for Life programme: Protocol. United Kingdom: Education Endowment Foundation.
  4. Marshall, L., Mazhar, A., Chere, B., & Rigby, E (2026). Introducing Foundations’ Outcomes Framework and Measures Database. United Kingdom. Foundations. 
  5. Bashir, M. S., Marshall, L., Mazhar, A., Pickenpack, A., Outhred, R., & Wishart, R. (2025). Update of the EEF’s Early Years Measures Database: Protocol. United Kingdom: Education Endowment Foundation.
  6. Mazhar, A., Valenzuela, P., & Outhred, R. (2025). Conceptualising, Implementing, and Contextualising SEL in Eight Countries, Global Synthesis Report. United Kingdom: Porticus Foundation.
  7. Pakistan Foundational Learning Hub (2025). Starting Early: Evaluation of MoFEPT's 100 Early Childhood Education Centres. Pakistan: Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training.