Dr Verena Pritchard

Biography

Dr Verena Pritchard joined the School of Psychology and Counselling at QUT in August 2020 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on a project investigating neurodevelopmental outcomes following childhood brain cancer with Professor Greig de Zubicaray.
Verena has expertise in the fields of neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and educational psychology with specific interests in school readiness and the academic and behavioural outcomes of children identified to be at risk (i.e., through illness, social adversity, prenatal drug exposure, preterm birth). Her research is dedicated to identifying early biopsychosocial risks to development with the aim of reducing risk burden in children vulnerable to adverse outcomes. She also has emerging and expanding interests in digital parenting practices, the digital home learning environment, and parental wellbeing, particularly among non-traditional family units during the transition to parenthood.
Graduating with a PhD in Psychology in 2007 (University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand), Dr Pritchard began her career as the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation’s Child Health Fellow working on large-scale longitudinal studies examining neurodevelopmental and educational outcomes in children born very preterm and children prenatally exposed to opiates. This was followed by lectureships in developmental psychology in New Zealand and psychology in the United Kingdom. More recently Verena has worked as a Lecturer in psychology and counselling at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) and as a Research Fellow at ACU’s Institute of Learning Sciences & Teacher Education on a longitudinal study with Professorial Fellow Charles Hulme (Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom). This study focused on identifying the domain-general and domain-specific predictors of early academic achievement and the cognitive precursors of comorbid learning disorders with a view to informing intervention
Verena has published widely on school readiness, academic achievement, executive function, attention and memory with works in notable Q1 journals including JAMA Pediatrics, Developmental Psychology, Child Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.