POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS

Maliki Eyvonne Ghossainy

Associate Project Director

malikig@bu.edu

Kiki is our Associate Project Director for the DBN. She completed her PhD in Psychology and MSc in Statistics at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. Kiki has been with the DBN since its inception in 2020 and has played a lead role in the design, implementation, and management of this large-scale, multi-site collaborative project. She helps ensure that our 15+ research teams have the support they need to be successful and meet the project's goals, and that collectively, we are attuning to the needs of all of our research participants.

Allison J. Williams-Gant

Postdoctoral Research Associate

awillia7@bu.edu

Allison J. Williams is an experimental psychologist. Her research interests focus on how children identify who (or what) is a good source of information and how this preference might change depending on the domain (e.g., religious vs scientific). Her most recent work examined how accuracy and expertise influence children’s judgements of a source’s knowledge and how these judgements influence children's preferences for future learning. She completed her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, with a specialization in Development, at the University of Louisville in 2022 and joined the Social Learning Lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate for the Developing Belief Network.

Jenny Nissel

Postdoctoral Research Associate

nissel@bu.edu

Jenny is a Postdoctoral Research Associate for the Developing Belief Network. She earned a B.A. from Yale University in Psychology and Theater (2009), and a Ph.D. from UT Austin in Developmental Psychology (2023). She studies the development of the imagination, with a particular interest in how children across cultures think about possibility, fiction, and religion.