Dr Rosa Hoekstra is a Professor of Developmental Disabilities at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience. After finishing her PhD in Behaviour Genetics at the VU University in Amsterdam, she continued her research through a postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre. Since 2009 she combines her autism research with teaching in the field of Psychology, first at The Open University (2009-2015) and now at King's College London (2015-present).

Her research interests broadly cover two themes:

1) Furthering the understanding of the heterogeneity of autism, by developing and validating quantitative instruments to assess the variable expression of the autism phenotype and its cognitive characteristics, and exploring the underlying mechanisms underpinning this heterogeneity, including genetic, sociocultural, sex/gender and environmental explanations.

2)  Global perspectives on autism with a specific focus on Africa. RH is PI on three projects involving children with developmental disorders in Ethiopia: 

i) the ASTA research project exploring social and cultural factors on autism in Ethiopia, with the aim to develop a culturally appropriate autism screening tool for sub-Saharan Africa; ii) the HEAT+ project, evaluating the effectiveness of mental health training on increasing awareness about mental health and developmental disorders among rural community health workers in Ethiopia; iii) a comprehensive evaluation of WHO’s Caregiver Skills Training (CST) programme for caregivers of children with developmental disorders, testing the feasibility and acceptability of implementing the CST programme in urban and rural Ethiopia. Together with Prof Amina Abubakar (Aga Khan University, Kenya) RH co-leads the NIHR-funded SPARK project, aiming to improve support for children with developmental disorders and their families in Ethiopia and Kenya. The £4.3 million SPARK project includes a large randomised controlled trial of the CST programme.