Dr. Afra Foroud
Afra Foroud is interested in how the developmental processes involved in the organization, expression, and function of movement in infants and young children shape learning, communication and language throughout the lifespan. Her research focuses on the analysis of movement structure, sequence, and quality during motor and language development in naturalistic settings. Outcomes of her work have characterized motor development in very young infants and demonstrated how early infantile movement patterns become expressed again in the elderly who have lost mobility due to stroke. During her tenure as a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, Afra began an examination of gestural and body actions within the contexts of language and spatial awareness in young and older adults. She continued this line of investigation with a CIHR Fellowship at UBC in young infants. Upon her return to Alberta, Afra joined the nationwide SSHRC funded Art for Social Change project to study the effects of dance on motor learning and social communication in people with Parkinson’s disease at the University of Calgary.
Afra is a neuroscientist who draws on her background as a dancer and dance educator to integrate art and science in the study of human development. She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Lethbridge where she continues her research and also enjoys teaching both inclusive and targeted dance classes for people with developmental disorders in the community of Lethbridge.