I'm a Professor at the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. I got my PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am interested in the ways in which babies shape their own learning by building on what they've done before. I am also interested in the ways in which adults speak to children and what children learn from the speech they hear. I have recently started to work with clinicians and charities to test ways of improving language outcomes in baby populations who are at risk of language delay. 

I am a Senior Lecturer in Developmental Linguistics in the Department of Language and Linguistic Science at the University of York. I got my PhD from the University of York and have since worked in North Carolina and Cardiff. I am interested in how babies make the transition from babble to words, and I use methods such as eye-tracking and lingual (tongue) ultrasound to find this out! I also work with speech and language therapists and other practitioners to find ways to apply my work in real-world settings.

Why do babies sleep so much? Would it surprise you that they actually learn while sleeping? My PhD project investigates whether night-time sleep and naps are linked to how babies learn new words. In my research, I also look at the associations between infant sleeping habits and the development of their vocabulary and motor skills. I also work on other projects exploring ways to use ultrasound to image infants' vocal tract, collaborating with speech and language therapists to measure babies' early communication skills, and investigating how parents speak to their children in different cultural contexts.   

I’m a joint PhD student at the University of York and Aarhus University in Denmark. My PhD project investigates how children discover, explore and learn speech sounds as well as how their active participation in language development influences how caregivers speak to them. To gain deeper insights into the feedback loops between caregivers and children, I use different analytic methods, including acoustic analysis of sound data from human and non-human animals, meta-analyses, and computational modelling. By examining these dynamic social interactions, I hope to gain a better idea of how children actively learn to produce the speech sounds they need to communicate.

I am Associate Head of Languages and Linguistics at York St John University.  I did my PhD at the University of York.  My research looks at what happens when a child is exposed to multiple dialects while they are acquiring language.  How does a child resolve contradictory patterns in the accents around them in their own developing speech production?  Do they acquire the accent of the local community, their parents’ accent, or something in between?  I’m interested in learning about what looking at the language development of these children can tell us about the ways that most typical children also learn to pronounce their language.