Broadly, I am most interested in the language and cognitive development of deaf children with a view to improve literacy and educational attainment in the deaf population. My research largely focuses on aspects of language and literacy development and processing in deaf children and adults. I have worked on many different research projects relating to language development and specific language impairments, including the development of sign language assessment tools such as the BSL Sentence Repetition Task and the Receptive Skills Test, and a reading intervention plan for pre-school deaf and hearing children.

My doctoral research investigated Visual Word Recognition in deaf readers, focussing on the interplay between orthographic, semantic and phonological information during word recognition and reading. Quite a large chunk of my PhD research focused on the role of phonology for deaf readers with an aim to reconcile previous mixed findings, because of this work, I am now considered to be a world expert on phonological processing in deaf, adult readers. As a result of this work, I have been invited to be a keynote speaker four times. As I strongly believe in applied research, I have very strong links with different schools for deaf children such as, Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children, Blanche Nevile School for Deaf Children, Heathlands School for Deaf Children and Hamilton Lodge School for Deaf Children.

I have delivered presentations and training sessions at those schools many times, covering topics such as sign language acquisition, cognitive development including executive functions and theory of mind, literacy development and intervention strategies for language and literacy development. Recently I have made this training available to community groups at Language Wise (link here). This is because I am extremely passionate about ensuring that all children get the chance to develop strong oral language skills (in either or both sign and spoken language skills), as this then enables children to go on to read and write well. Strong language skills also support academic achievement and socio-emotional wellbeing. The more that people know about how language and cognition develops, the better they can nurture this development in children.

I have worked with Joanna Hoskin, a language therapist, to deliver training to deaf practitioners on how to track and assess language development in deaf children with mental health issues. My future plans include continuing developing language assessment tools for deaf children and adults, as this will enable us to gain new insights into how language develops in the deaf population and more importantly, give researchers and practitioners tools to track and assess language in this population. I also wish to develop language intervention measures for deaf children of all ages, including supporting families of deaf children in raising and educating their deaf child.