María Florencia Giuliani

Background

I have always been very curious; it is hard for something not to interest me. However, it is also hard for something to hold my interest for long. Literature and psychology are the two paths that lead me to the one question that has never bored me: How do we become who we are? Learning comes back, again and again, as the answer.

I studied Psychology at the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata (UNMdP) after a brief spell studying Literature. I took part in research groups on the history of psychology and on positive psychology in adolescents before turning to the psychology of ageing, specifically to emotion regulation in central relationships during adulthood. I wrote my doctoral thesis on this topic. From that experience I take away the idea that we learn throughout our whole lives, and about the most intimate and complex aspects of human experience, with reflection and metacognition as key tools.

At the same time, for a while now, I have been a lecturer in the Department of Science Education of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the UNMdP, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Basic, Applied and Technology Psychology of the UNMdP–CONICET. In these roles I teach and carry out research on Educational Psychology and on the development of socio-emotional competences in science teachers. I believe this aspect is central to understanding why and how learning and human development work in the classroom.

I am always looking for something new in what I do. That search, and the generosity of my colleagues and teachers, brought me to this team, where I hope to collaborate intensively!