Lara Abel is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge for the Action Research on Research Culture project. Her academic background is in Psychology and Computer Science. She has studied and worked at various academic institutions, including University of Heidelberg, Free University Berlin, University of Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institutes for Human Development and Biological Cybernetics. In her doctoral thesis she studied the effect of emotions on cognitive processes. Lara is also a freelancing market researcher, specialised on focus group moderation, and head of public relations for the NGO Partnerschaft Bangladesh e.V.