Hi there! Welcome to my academic portfolio. I am Tobias Constien – but you should feel free to just call me Tobi! I am currently a PhD Candidate at the UCD Babylab in the School of Psychology at the University College Dublin. I’m being supervised by Dr. Michelle Downes.

I’m broadly interested in the psychological mechanisms and functions of play, whether it’s in development, therapy, or simply how I can win against my wife in board games. In my PhD, for example, I am exploring the role of pretend play in toddlers’ development of executive functions. In my work in dramatherapy, I’m looking at play from a clinical perspective. Nonetheless, I still usually loose in board games against my wife.

Current Projects

One of the wonderful (and sometimes horrible) things about working in and around academia, is that you always have a number of projects ongoing at the same time. This is a snippet of my to-do list right now:

• TEDDY Project: My wonderful, fun PhD Project on toddlers’ play and executive functions.
• Fatherhood Study: A meaningful qualitative study on the experience of becoming a father for the very first time.
• SCOOT Study: The SCOOT study looks at toddlers’ sleep, screen-time, and play in Ireland.
• EFD Case Study Project: A collaborative pilot from the European Federation of Dramatherapy and the Dramatherapy Journal.
• Adults Play Too!: A systematic review mapping quantitative measures of adult playfulness.

For more info

Get in touch with me.

This website is based on the Academic Pages template and hosted on GitHub pages. You can fork this template right now, and create your own site. I highly recommend!