I am a Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy with a research interest in exploring typical and atypical speech production processes across the life span.

My current research focuses on describing the acoustic properties of disordered speech and determining its impact on communication in children and adults with motor disorders. I am also interested in understanding how speech changes as children grow, and how older age affects speech production processes.

I gained my PhD on intonation in foreign accent syndrome from the University of Strathclyde. A subsequent British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship enabled me to extend my work in this field and investigate intonation and prosody in children with cerebral palsy.

My work is funded by the British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

Ongoing projects include:

• ESRC funded research on how children‘s speech changes as they grow (VariCS) with Dr Joanne Cleland, Dr David Young (University of Strathclyde) and Prof Jane Stuart-Smith (University of Glasgow)
• ESRC funded research into the role of cognition and speech in older adults’ communication patterns (PhD student: Laura Manderson; with Dr Louise Brown Nicholls and Prof Anja Lowit, University of Strathclyde)

• Motor speech disorders in adults and children 
• Typical speech production across the life span
• Speech development in multilingual children
• Acoustic analyses for the assessment of motor speech disorders

My research focuses on motor speech disorders in children and adults. I am interested in understanding the underlying nature of their speech problems, how these problems manifest, and how current treatment approaches target these difficulties. I harness the power of detailed acoustic analyses to aid the understanding of these aspects. My goal is to undertake research that advances our theoretical understanding of speech disorders and drives clinical practices, which can improve well-being, social and communicative participation for those affected by motor speech disorders.

While my main focus is on describing patterns of disordered speech, I am also interested in exploring speech processes in typical speech across the life span, with a particular focus on determining variability in typical speech patterns and what these can tell us about disordered speech.

PhD and MPhil students

• Amy Smith, PhD candidate: Measuring Variability in Child Speech Using Instrumental Articulatory Techniques
• Laura Manderson, PhD candidate: Ageing and communication: Understanding the roles of cognition, speech production, and social participation
• Nameeka Shahid, PhD candidate: Impact of dysarthria in a Pakistani cultural context
• Manali Sharma, MPhil candidate: Comprehension and Production of passive constructions in bilingual aphasia (Hindi and English)
• Charya Jayasri Udara Bandara Kapurupastha Bandarage, MPhil candidate: Quantifying undifferentiated lingual gestures of children with velar fronting problem using ultrasound tongue imaging

I am happy to supervise students with research interests involving any area of motor speech disorders.

I teach on the BSc Hons Speech and Language Pathology undergraduate programme and supervise MPhil and PhD students.

My undergraduate teaching covers the following areas:

• Psycholinguistics
• Neurology and Paediatrics (Module lead)
• Childhood Dysarthria – Assessment and Intervention
• Multilingualism
• Research Investigation (module lead)