Ilse Coolen completed a BSc and MSc in clinical psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium. Following this, she completed a PhD “The Challenges of Mathematics: It Adds Up” at the University of Hull.
She then took up several postdoctoral positions continuing her work on mathematical cognition at the University of Oxford, Université Paris Cité in France, and the Donders Institute in the Netherlands.
Ilse obtained two fellowships, the Teach@Tubingen fellowship at the University of Tuebingen and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Fellowship from the European Commission, where she worked at the KU Leuven in Belgium and the University of Oxford.
She joined the Department of Mathematics Education as a Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition in March 2026.
• Executive Functions in mathematics development
• Domain-general and domain-specific contributors to early mathematics
• Spatial mechanisms underlying mathematics learning
• Tackling heterogeneity in mathematics learning
Ilse teaches Educational Neuroscience
• Associate Editor of Journal of Numerical Cognition
• Founder of the CHAOS network (Cognitive Heterogeneity Across Outcomes and Studies)
• Founder of the MCLS (Mathematical Cognition and Learning Society) mentoring program
• Past-president of MCLS trainee