Profile

I come from a tiny hamlet in France, halfway between Lyon and Geneva. It is so small that there my neighbours include cows and chicken. My mum is Spanish, so I’ve also spent a lot of time in Spain (that’s actually where I got my elbow broken, in Grenade). Now I live in Edinburgh with my friend Eva. Our flat is full of gorgeous houseplants, and we gave a name to each of them. Our building has a garden where we can meet our neighbours’ cat and dog.

I like travels, books (especially old ones), music (especially classical and jazz), films, dancing (especially ballet and swing), food (maybe because I’m French), and pretty much any animal. I’m passionate about the environmental crisis, so I’ve been vegetarian for years (though I’m afraid I’ll never be able to give up on cheese), and I’m not buying clothes in fast-fashion brands (it’s not easy, but actually I like to have my own style!). I’m also passionate about feminism, so I always do my best to show that women and girls do belong in science. Before lockdown I really got into climbing and bouldering (climbing without ropes), but with lockdown I turned to yoga instead. I’m not good at either of these but I enjoy them anyway.

Our mind and our brain are in charge of a lot of things, including making sense of social information, and understanding the point of view of other people. This mental social skill (understanding other’s point of view) is shaped by many things, like knowing more than one language. One part of my research was about understanding how being bilingual actually shaped this mental social skill: Is it learning a second language as a child? Is it being very good at languages?

The autistic mind sometimes works differently from the non-autistic mind. As a result, autistic people can actually have a lot of difficulties with this social skill (understanding others’ point of view). But then what happens for autistic people who are also bilingual? Do we see the same link between this social skill and bilingualism in the autistic mind? Can bilingualism help autistic people, or is bilingualism causing too much confusion? The second part of my research was to answer these questions: I wanted to understand how bilingualism could shape the social life, social mind, and social brain of autistic people.

I often start work around 9 am, with a good cup of tea and a biscuit. My days may look the same because I’m often either in front of the computer, or in front of my students, but in reality I do a lot of different things!

I spend a lot of time reading about what other scientists did, to get a better idea of what I should do. I also teach Psychology to undergraduate students, and I guide final year students who are learning how to run their own research projects.

Sometimes though, I spend the day with the people of participate in my research! I ask them to complete questionnaires, play special computer games, and then I also ask them to go into an MRI scanner! With the questionnaires I can get information about their life, with the computer games I can figure out how their mind works, and with the MRI scanner I can see how their brain works! I need to meet with a lot of participants to do my research, so there are many days when I spend all my time with them.

When it is time to make sense of my results, I spend a lot of time reading what my participants said, calculating numbers and looking at brain pictures. Finally, when I know what the results are, it is time to write about them so that other scientists, but also doctors, teachers, and everybody else, know about these new discoveries.

Whatever I do during the day, when it is about 6 pm I leave the office, and I go home, or I go and meet my friends!