Rate My Professor Jenny Gibson

Professor Jenny Gibson is Professor of Neurodiversity and Developmental Psychology at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She leads the Play and Communication Lab research group and serves as co-director of the PEDAL centre for research on Play in Education, Development and Learning, as well as co-director of the Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence. Her academic background includes a PhD, MRes and BSc (Hons) from the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester, and an MSt in Healthcare Data: Informatics Innovation and Commercialization from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. A qualified speech and language therapist registered with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists and the Health and Care Professions Council, she specialises in autism and developmental language disorder.

Jenny Gibson’s research examines the connections between linguistic and social aspects of child development, with key focuses on neurodivergence, play and mental health. She adopts a neurodiversity-affirming approach in her work and has contributed to projects on topics including autism, developmental language disorder, bilingualism in autism, peer play in early childhood, and the role of play in education and care for young autistic children. Recent publications include the 2024 book Developmental Language Disorder and Social-Emotional Development (Oxford University Press, co-authored with Umar Toseeb) and numerous peer-reviewed articles on autistic adults’ perspectives on play, generative AI in early childhood, and related themes. She is a member of the National Statistician’s Advisory Group for Inclusive Data and supervises postgraduate students in psychology and education while teaching on the Education Tripos. Her professional email address is jlg53@cam.ac.uk.