Elena Geangu

Dr. Elena Geangu is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Psychology at the University of York, UK. Her research focuses on early socio-emotional development, particularly empathy emergence and mental state understanding in infants and toddlers. She employs behavioral, neuroimaging, and psychophysiological methods like EEG/ERP, eye-tracking, and electromyography (EMG).

Education:

• BSc Psychology (2002), Babes-Bolyai University, Romania
• MSc Psychological Counselling and Psychotherapy (2003), Babes-Bolyai University
• PhD Developmental Psychology (2008), Babes-Bolyai University

Research Interests:

• Development of empathy and affect sharing
• Cross-cultural emotion perception
• Multi-sensory action processing
• Neural mechanisms of social cognition

Publications: Over 30 peer-reviewed articles, including work on infant facial responses to emotions, cultural perceptual strategies, and neural correlates of action sound processing. Recent studies focus on wearable sensor technologies for infant attention tracking and autonomic nervous system function.

Awards:

• 2006 DAAD Stipendienurkunde for young researchers
• 2007 CNCSIS Research Grant (1st rank)

Grants & Collaborations: Principal Investigator for EPSRC and EU-funded projects on infant development technologies. Collaborates with researchers in Italy, Japan, and the UK.

Teaching: Leads advanced modules in Developmental Social Neuroscience and supervises PhD projects on empathy development and action perception.