Julia-Marie Lukas

Julia is a PhD researcher at the University of St Andrews, investigating how families learn about money in the digital age. Her research focuses on working directly with parents and their children to understand everyday financial learning moments and what families actually need for lifelong financial wellbeing. Her goal is that young people grow up with positive wellbeing and feeling confident about money.

Before returning to academia, Julia spent more than 15 years at Amazon, IBM and the University of Dundee working on problems at the intersection of data, behaviour, and experience. She worked as Head of Strategy Implementation in the Executive & Strategy Office at the University of Dundee, where she led cross-departmental strategy development for the University Executive Group and University Court. At Amazon, she led EU-wide initiatives to identify and reduce customer pain points, and later moved into people strategy, focusing on employee wellbeing, engagement, and diversity, equity, and inclusion across customer service operations. She managed cross-functional teams of analysts, data scientists, UX researchers, and programme managers. At IBM, she ran data analytics projects that helped clients make sense of complex information and act on it more effectively.

Julia holds an MSc in Psychology, an MLitt in Marketing and a certificate in counselling skills. She welcomes connections with researchers, practitioners, and policymakers working on family financial education and wellbeing.

Julia-Marie's doctoral research examines family financial socialisation in the digital age, exploring how the shift toward digital transactions has transformed the ways children and young people develop financial competencies through everyday family interactions.

Her previous academic work includes research on cognitive psychology and financial capability. She has co-authored a literature review for the UK Money and Pension Service examining the impact of digital money on children and young people's financial education. She also has a working paper on investigating how everyday memory strategies predict subjective cognitive abilities across the adult lifespan.

Academic Qualifications

• MSc in Psychology with distinction, University of Strathclyde (2023)
• MLitt in Marketing with distinction, University of St Andrews (2015)
• BA in International Business Administration, Berlin School of Economics & Law (2011)

Professional Certifications

• Certificate in Counselling Skills, Counselling & Psychotherapy Scotland (2023)
• Membership of the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme
• Mental Health First Aider (2021)
• PRINCE2 Practitioner Certificate in Project Management (2016)
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• SAP Business Intelligence with SAP Netweaver 7.0 Certification (2012)