Katerina Dounavi is an Associate Professor at the School of Philosophy and Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she teaches courses related to educational psychology, behaviour management in the classroom and autism, supervises doctoral students and contributes as the Erasmus Coordinator of the Department of Education and the Accessibility Advisor of the School. Until 2025 she held a Senior Lecturer position at Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom, where she served as the Director of the Master’s in Applied Behavior Analysis and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Behaviour Analysis. Since 2026 she has been a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Belfast.
Katerina Dounavi graduated with distinction from the School of Psychology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2006. She completed her master’s degree in educational psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain graduating with distinction and a special mention of excellence. She then completed her doctoral studies in clinical psychology with emphasis in educational psychology at the same university graduating with distinction.
She has received training in behaviour analysis, being the first certified behaviour analyst in Greece (Board Certified Behavior Analyst-Doctoral), as well as in systemic psychotherapy She is a member of the Association for Behavior Analysis International, European Association for Behaviour Analysis and the Association of Greek Psychologists.
Her research has been published in international scientific journals of high esteem and has been presented in international conferences more than 50 times. In 2025 she co-authored with Dr Amy Tanner the book “SPARC: A Sequential Parent Curriculum designed for Infants and Toddlers showing signs of Autism or Developmental Delays”, a manual for parents and professionals who support infants and toddlers with signs of a developmental disorder such as autism. She serves as an Associate Editor in the Journal of Physical and Developmental Disabilities, as a member of the Editorial Board in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and in Revista de Innovaciónón y Buenas Prácticas Docentes, and as a reviewer in numerous international journals. She has served as an assessor of competitive research projects for funding schemes in the United Kingdom (e.g., UKRI FLF) and Greece (ΕΛΙΔΕΚ, ΙΚΥ). Examples of the impact of her work are that she routinely receives invitations to teach in Spain, she has delivered invited addresses in conferences in France, the USA and Greece, and she has served as an expert validator for the National Qualifications Center of the United Arab Emirates, while her studies have been used 12 times in policy documents in Canada, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland and Thailand (e.g., by the Canadian Agency for Drugs & Technologies in Health and by the US Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality).
During her clinical work, she has supported children, youth and their families in numerous centres and schools in Spain, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Greece and she has supervised dozens of professionals in two continents (Europe and America). For example, between 2010 and 2021 she was the Clinical Director of Melody Learning Center in Germany, a service provider for children and young people with disability Between 2012 and 2020 she served as the Senior Supervisor of Futuroschool in France, a specialised service provider for children and young people with autism and other developmental disorders, being responsible for the design and assessment of interventions, training and supervision of professionals, family support and collaboration with school/the community.
Her research and clinical interests focus on evidence-based education, developmental disorders, applied behaviour analysis, language acquisition, parent and professional training and the use of technology for the development of effective educational interventions.