Dr. Kate Cowan is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL Institute of Education. Her research explores children′s play and communication from a multimodal perspective, including aspects such as literacy, creativity and digital technologies. Kate’s work also involves developing multimodal methodologies, video-based methods and participatory approaches to research with children. Projects include ′A National Observatory of Children′s Play Experiences During Covid-19′ (funded by the ESRC), ′Playing the Archive: Memory, Community and Mixed Reality Play’ (funded by the EPSRC) and ′Valuing Young Children’s Signs of Learning: Observation and Digital Documentation of Play in Early Years Classrooms’ (funded by the Froebel Trust). Kate has a background in early years teaching and she remains committed to connecting research and practice. In addition to academic publication in books and papers, Kate has written for teachers, students and the general public.