Tereza Javornicky Brumovska, PhD.

Tereza is an awarded H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Currie Action Research Fellow for the project no.:101027291 ENCOUNTER: Experiences of Youths in Natural Mentoring Relationships.

With a background in social sciences and social work, Tereza has long-term experience researching the theme of youth mentoring. Her interest in youth mentoring started during her BA studies in 2003 when she volunteered for the Czech Big Brothers Big Sisters/5P mentoring programme. This experience became the research focus of her MA research dissertation, which eventually received funding for publication as a monograph on youth mentoring in the Czech context (2010). This academic passion was further kindled during her PhD on understanding youth mentoring relationships and benefits, completed in UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, the School of Sociology and Political Science, NUI Galway. The PhD. experience further facilitated her skills and expertise in applied social-science methods to develop and evaluate evidence-based practice in social services for socially disadvantaged children and youths. She was also trained in advanced relational skills through arts-based methods, worked in different positions with socially disadvantaged and vulnerable children, youths and young adults, and coordinated university students' volunteering programme.

Before the MSCA IF Encounter project, Tereza coordinated student volunteering programme at NUI Galway (2018-19), worked as a postdoctoral researcher exploring Children's attitudes to science and scientists (CATSS Study, NUI Galway, 2019-2020) and coordinated fieldwork with speech therapists in the study on children's language development (BDTJ Study, FHS UK and Czech Academy of Science, Institute of Psychology, 2020-21). She also worked as a full-time lecturer at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities at Charles University in Prague (2020-21), which included teaching a module on Mentoring for Children and Youths designed for BA students (2020-21).

Further details:

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6582-0371

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tereza-Brumovska/research

Ms Marketa Michalcova

Marketa is a student at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities in bachelor programme Humanities Studies and student of Psychology at Palacky University Olomouc. She has been interested in mentoring since 2019 when she became a volunteer at Lata as mentor. In project ENCOUNTER, she is a research assistant. She assists the project with specialisation in science communication (social media, website). She also contributes to fieldwork and data analysis of the project throughout its course.

Doc. Gabriela Seidlová Málková, PhD.

Gabriela is a supervisor of the ENCOUNTER project and IF fellowship. She is a founder of the Department of Psychology at the School of Liberal Arts and Humanities (ENCOUNTER Host Institution). She also acts as a vice-dean for research at the same School. She is an expert researcher in educational and developmental psychology, specialising in literacy and its impact on children's social exclusion/inclusion. With long experience conducting studies as a principal investigator in developmental psychology in European and Czech-funded projects and have a long experience supervising PhD fellows. She has co-authored publications on youth mentoring in the Czech and international context. Her expertise in tackling deprivation, creating conditions for positive change in education, and developing methodical tools for educators are particularly relevant in supervising the ENCOUNTER project. She will provide advanced training in current psychological theories on children's development in a social context and in methods and skills for developing intervention materials/programmes for school children while co-authoring ENCOUNTER publications and other outputs. She has long-standing collaborative relationships with several Czech primary schools, which will facilitate access to research participants during the fieldwork of the ENCOUNTER project.