Dr Louise Kay

• Associate Investigator
• University of Sheffield
• louise.kay@sheffield.ac.uk
• ORCID

Dr Louise Kay is a Partner Investigator on the ARC-funded Discovery Project focusing on children’s engagement with Internet connected toys. She has worked extensively on the MakEY project at the University of Sheffield. A key output from this project was the development of a Makerspace Learning Assessment Framework based on the Characteristics of Effective Learning from the English Early Years Foundation Stage statutory framework. Louise has also been involved in the Maker {Futures} project working closely with a local primary school in Sheffield in one of the most deprived areas of the city to develop and embed a maker curriculum framework and maker home learning package. A core aim of this project is to ensure children are developing STEAM and transversal skills, so they are well-prepared for future employment in the 21st century.

During the pandemic lockdown, Louise collaborated with the V & A Museum on their recent Alice: Curioser and Curioser exhibition which involved facilitating online makerspace workshops for children aged birth to five. The project significantly developed V & A provision of digital workshops for families with young children including safeguarding procedures, resources and online engagement when working with babies and very young children.

Louise’s expertise and recent work in STEAM, makerspaces and young children will benefit the Educated Child program across all three strands and the Language and Cognition strand of the Healthy Child program.

Earliest digital memory
Getting a ZX Spectrum for Christmas when I was about 11 and thinking it was a plastic typewriter.

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