Lancaster’s Psychology Department will play host to the 9th Lancaster International Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (LCICD 2025), inviting researchers from across the world to speak on human development.

The conference – which runs from 27^th-29^th August – will again be hosted at Lancaster University, which is home to one of Europe’s most well-established and renowned Babylabs, housed within their encompassing Infant and Child Development Lab. The conference was established in 2015 and has rapidly developed into one of the worldwide leading conferences on infant development. The research focus of the conference spans the entirety of early childhood, from prenatal to age four, and looks to cover a range of exciting research topics, from in-utero detection of early sensory brain responses and decoding infants’ category knowledge using advanced EEG analysis, to language acquisition in multilingual infants and the development of inhibitory control from infancy to early childhood.

This year, the conference welcomes three keynote speakers:

• Professor Karen Adolph from New York University, eminent researcher in the field of infant motor development, who will be delivering her talk on “How Behaviour Develops”.
• Professor Diane Poulin-Dubois of Concordia University, with research specialisms in early cognitive and language development, whose keynote will delve into “Infants’ insight into the mind: How deep?”.
• Professor Judit Gervain of the Padova Neuroscience Centre, whose research focuses on early speech perception and language acquisition in monolingual, bilingual, and hearing-impaired children. Her keynote talk will explore how “Language learning starts in the womb: how prenatal experience lays the foundations for language acquisition”.

The conference will welcome over 100 of the world’s researchers in early child development, fostering a welcoming, friendly research environment for both those at the forefront of the field as well as those at the start of their research careers. Amongst the highlights of the itinerary are the dedicated poster sessions, Gala Dinner, and ‘no-results-yet’ posters for early-career researchers, ensuring an inclusive atmosphere for all.

On the upcoming conference, co-chair Professor Gert Westermann commented: “Studying infants requires its own set of methods and skills. LCICD, organised by the Infant and Child Development Lab in Lancaster's Psychology Department, has been a forum for pioneers in infancy research for the past 10 years. We are very much looking forward to again welcoming delegates old and new from around the world to discuss the cutting edge of research in this rapidly advancing field.”