Carina de Klerk

Dr. Carina de Klerk is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on social cognition, action understanding, and imitation in infants and toddlers, with a particular emphasis on brain mechanisms underlying these abilities. She holds a PhD in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience from Birkbeck College, University of London, and completed a master’s degree at Leiden University.

Her work investigates facial mimicry development using EMG and fNIRS technologies, and explores how perceptual-motor couplings influence infants’ ability to predict others’ actions. She has secured grants including a Marie Curie fellowship and awards from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Her teaching roles include leading courses on psychology projects, numerical methods in cognitive neuroscience, and developmental theories.

Dr. de Klerk’s research has addressed topics such as face processing in children at risk for autism, the role of sensorimotor experience in imitation, and inhibitory control in infants. She currently supervises PhD students researching empathy-aggression relationships and inhibitory control in early childhood. Recent grants include studies on infant body representations and the development of facial mimicry.

Her lab, the Essex Babylab, focuses on multisensory experience and parent-infant relationships, with publications in journals like Cortex, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B.