Anja Lowit

I have been a member of the Speech and Language Therapy team at Strathclyde University since 1996 and have been actively involved in research and teaching in this area. My research involves the development of new clinical techniques on the basis of advances in the theoretical field. In addition to contributing to development of analysis methodologies in clinical research, my work furthermore focuses on questions that have direct impact on patient management and wellbeing.

My teaching includes clinical linguistics, where I strive to make complex linguistic theories accessible to students, and more importantly, to highlight the links between these and clinical practice.

• Communication disorders
• Acoustic speech analysis
• Prosody
• Motor speech disorders

I am responsible for the clinical linguistics curriculum for the BSc in Speech and Language Pathology. My teaching includes pragmatics, semantics, grammar, bilingualism and instrumental speech analysis. I also contribute to a variety of clinical modules and supervises students on clinical placement.

Current and past external educational responsibilities include various external examiner positions, currently with Manchester University, and being a member of course accreditation panels at international level. I have also held a number of visiting lecturer posts, such as in Malta or Portugal. I furthermore represented RCSLT in the Education committee of CPLOL (Comité Permanent de Liaison des Orthophonistes / Logopèdes de l'Union Européenne) from 2008 and held the position of Vice President of this committee from 2009 to 2011.

My research mainly focuses on motor speech disorders. This includes the application of instrumental techniques to diagnosis and treatment, the investigation of prosodic difficulties and the evaluation of assessment and treatment techniques for these disorders.
Furthermore, I am interested in the nature of other speech problems, such as cleft palate speech, prosodic disturbances across a range of disorders, including autism, as well as the relationship between speech perception and production, and cognition and speech and language skills in degenerative disorders. Recent work also extends to evaluating outcome measures for speech and language therapy, as well as investigations of service delivery models.

I trained as a speech and language therapist at Reading University (BA Hons in Linguistics and Language Pathology) and then moved to Newcastle upon Tyne to do my PhD on acoustic phonetic analysis in dysarthria. I practised briefly as a speech and language therapist in North Wales before moving to Strathclyde University where I have been teaching on the BSc in Speech and Language Pathology since 1996.