Sonja Kälin studied psychology at the University of Bern (BSc 2014, MSc 2017), specialising in developmental psychology and neuropsychology. She completed her PhD at the same institution in 2022 with distinction (summa cum laude). In her dissertation, she investigated the relationships between executive functions, temperament, and metacognition, highlighting the central role of inhibition and monitoring.

Before pursuing psychology, she earned a primary school teaching diploma and gained extensive practical experience as a primary school teacher.

Following her PhD, she held several research and teaching positions, including a postdoctoral position at the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at the University of Lucerne. There, her work focused on the psychological and socioeconomic consequences of childhood cancer, while further strengthening her methodological expertise, particularly in qualitative research methods. In addition, she served as a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education, where she taught in the field of socio-emotional development, and taught developmental psychology at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Since 2025, she has been a senior research and teaching associate (Oberassistentin) at the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences and Psychology at the University of Lucerne in the field of child and adolescent psychology. Her research focuses on socio-emotional development in childhood and the role of parental behavior in these developmental processes. She is particularly interested in everyday dynamics of parent–child interactions and their situational context. Another focus of her work is intervention research in the field of animal-assisted therapy for children and adolescents.

• Proseminar