Research | 2027 Strategic Initiative Operational Planning – Prework Session

 Today I was invited to represent the Children's Voices Centre at the CSU Research | 2027 Strategic Initiative Operational Planning – Prework Session organised by the Office of Strategy (Marion Ware)

Invited presentation: ELEVATE grant writing for researchers

Today I gave an invited presentation to the Charles Sturt University course "ELEVATE grant writing for researchers". Over 20 early and mid career researchers have attended six sessions over the year to prepare grant applications. I was invited to talk about "Creating and maintaining your research identity: Research CVs to support grant writing"

 

WHO discussions about CVC becoming a WHO Collaborating Centre

 What an exciting meeting. After two years of formally working with the WHO Disability Programme, the Children's Voices Centre has been invited to become a WHO Collaborating Centre. Tonight we discussed the Workplan and next steps towards formalisation.

Meeting with Emeritus Professors

What a joy to spend time with Emeritus Professors Ben Bradley and Jane Selby today to discuss their research about babies in groups. We look forward to welcoming them as adjunct professors at the Children's Voices Centre.

 

 

Productive research week with CeTasSSD team

Today (Monday 21st September) A/Prof Sarah Verdon, Felicity Laurence and I had a very productive day (ALL day) working through the CET contract, data, and papers that we are writing to finalise the CET speech screening pathway. 

Tuesday and Wednesday (22nd and 23rd September) I met with Dr Audrey Wang to work on the ICS and ICSE data for 2026.

Wednesday (23rd September) Ally Barrett visited The Treehouse to discuss the publications we will be working on that have come about as part of her important research assistant role earlier in the year.  

Thursday (24th September) Felicity, Dr Nicola Ivory, Sarah Verdon and I met with work on the ICS data for 2025. 

What a hard-working team!

  

Sarah Verdon, Sharynne  McLeod, Felicity Laurence working on Monday

 

CVC2026 certificates

I just received my certificates for each of my CVC2026 presentations and the following email: 

Dear author
Thank you for presenting your research at the Children’s Voices Conference 2026 (CVC2026). Please find attached certificates in appreciation of your valuable contribution to the conference.
All CVC2026 abstracts and presentations remain available on the Children’s Voices Conference website for you to share with colleagues and others in your networks.
We suggest the following format for citing individual conference contributions: Author, A. (2026). Title of your paper. In S. McLeod, C. Gregoric, E. Hayes, K. Cologon, & T. Cumming (Eds.), Children’s Voices Conference 2026 (CVC2026) Conference Proceedings (pp. xxx–xxx). Charles Sturt University. https://childrensvoicesconference.csu.domains/
We would greatly value your feedback. Your responses will help us understand your experience of CVC2026 and inform the development of future Children’s Voices Centre events. Please take a few minutes to complete our short survey: https://tinyurl.com/CVC2026feedback 
CVC2026 also marked the launch of Children Draw | Share | Create Belonging, an international research project inviting children to share what belonging means to them through their posters, postcards and podcasts. We warmly encourage you to continue sharing this opportunity and to invite the children in your lives to create an artwork about belonging. Further information is available on the Children’s Voices Centre research webpage.
You can continue to engage with the work of the Children’s Voices Centre on LinkedIn and share your reflections and connections using #CVC2026.
Thank you again for contributing to the international CVC2026 community. We hope the research, conversations and connections developed through the conference will continue to support our shared commitment to creating a more inclusive world for children.

Warm regards
Dr Carolyn Gregoric
Conference Secretary
Children’s Voices Conference 2026

Children's Voices Centre
Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW
Email: cvc2026@csu.edu.au

 
 

Call for priority topics on women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health beyond 2030

This call has just been released. We will submit at least one coordinated response from the Children’s Voices Centre.

Call for priority topics on women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health beyond 2030
WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA and the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (PMNCH) are seeking input to help shape the future of women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health beyond 2030. https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/call-for-priority-topics-on-women-s--children-s--and-adolescents--health-beyond-2030 (Deadline 18 October 2026) 

 

CVC2026 in WHO Disability Health Equity Network newsletter!

The WHO Disability Health Equity Network (based in Geneva, Switzerland) profiled our Children’s Voices Conference (2026) in their newsletter (see below and attached)! They wrote

"The Children’s Voices Centre at Charles Sturt University international online conference held 1-3 September
The event brought together researchers, practitioners and students from around the world to share research with, for and about children, including several presentations on the right to health for children with disabilities. Find out more and see event presentations at Children’s Voices Conference 2026 (CVC2026)”

Children's Voices Centre community research lunch

 Today's Children's Voices Centre community research lunch was our bimonthly CVC update.

We discussed:

1. Success of CVC2026. A summary is available here: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2026/09/childrens-voices-conference-2026-cvc2026.html

2. Launch of Children Draw|Create|Share Belonging: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/childrens-voices-centre/research

3. New special issue of Child Language Teaching and Therapy focussed on  and edited by CVC staff and HDR student: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/clt

It was a good time of sharing amongst CVC staff and affiliates. 

CSU course: Supporting university staff with their mental health

Today I attended the Charles Sturt University course: CSU Real Talk: Supporting university staff with their mental health

"Mental health is a state of well-being in which every individual realises their own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to contribute to their community" - World Health Organization 

 Mental health spectrum: healthy - coping - difficulties - diagnosed with illness 

 NIP: notice - inquire - provide 

Here are two general information slides from the session: 

 

SPAA-C lecture for Finland's speech and language therapists

 Tonight A/Prof Kate Crowe (CVC Adjunct and A/Prof at University of Iceland) and I recorded a lecture on the Speech Participation and Activity Assessment - Children (SPAA-C) for a professional development course for Finland's speech and language therapists. We were invited by Krista Tuohimaa, Head of the Research Unit of Logopedics, University of Oulu, Finland.

McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2026, September). Children as informants on their own communication: Speech Participation and Activity Assessment of Children (SPAA-C). Presentation for the Advanced logopedic assessment: Children and adolescents course within the Neurological and Neurodevelopmental Communication Disorders in Adults and Children specialisation program, University of Oulu and University of Helsinki.

 

The SPAA-C is available for free here: https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-assessments/spaa-c

Here is the original article describing its origin:

McLeod, S. (2004). Speech pathologists' application of the ICF to children with speech impairment. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 6(1), 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/14417040410001669516 
 

Research with ICS and 2- to 3-year-old children

Today I met with Claire Price who is undertaking her PhD at Southern Cross University with Prof Nat Munro, Prof Elise Baker, and Prof Pam Hadley to discuss using the Intelligibility in Context Scale in her research. Best wishes for your research Claire and team.

 

Planning to visit Vietnam

At the end of this month Dr Helen L. Blake and I will be visiting Ha Noi National University of Education in Vietnam. Today we had a meeting with A/Prof Ben Pham to discuss the visit. While we are in Vietnam we have a number of meetings and presentations. We will be presenting:

*Keynote address: Saturday 3^rd October HNUE-Conference
Topic: Supporting speech, language and communication for children with disabilities in Vietnam

*Workshop on ethics on Friday, 2nd October, 2016 
Topic: Ethical considerations in conducting research with children (2 hours including interpretation into Vietnamese)
Host: HNUE, Department of Science and Technology and HNUE ethics council

*Workshop on Monday, 5th October, 2026, 9:00AM-11:30AM and 14:00PM-16:30PM
Topic: Children’s speech assessment and intervention: What’s new? and What’s evidence?
Participants: special education teachers, SLPs and other related professionals
Host: Faculty of Special Education, School of Child Development Sciences-HNUE

Helen, Sharynne, Ben

WHO Disability Health Equity Network: Workstream 4

Today was the sixth meeting of Workstream 4 of the WHO Disability Health Equity Network.

Scheduling WHO meetings is difficult. Here are the timezones we each were meeting on: 

• Tue Sep 15: 3-4pm ET
• Tue Sep 15: 9-10pm CEST
• Wed Sep 16: 5-6am AEST (Sydney, Australian time)

We discussed the outcomes of each of the subcommittees to date. I am in subcommittee 3.  We are focusing on research and evidence mobilization.

 

 

It was announced that there is a special issue of Disability and Health Journal https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/disability-and-health-journal titled Global Disability Health Equity https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/336891/global-disability-health-equity

SACHL conversation: Learning from Germany

Today Dr Kate Margetson and I had a wonderful opportunity to learn from our colleague Prof Annette Fox-Boyer from Germany about her use of the Multilingual Children's Speech website and the SACHL. She mentioned that 40% of Germans now speak a language other than German - with common languages including Turkish, Polish, Arabic, Ukrainian, Russian, Farsi/Persian, Romanian. Thanks Annette for sharing your insights and wisdom.

Annette Fox-Boyer, Sharynne McLeod, Kate Margetson

 

Cancer graduation

I just graduated from my 8 year cancer journey. Thank you Prof Fran Boyle, Prof Andrew Spillane, Prof Gillian Lamoray, my wonderful family and friends. I'm so glad to be alive.

My oncologist, Prof Fran Boyle celebrating my cancer graduation (and I'm wearing my PhD bonnet that was at hand for the photo)

.

 

LSHSS clinical forum

Today Helen Blake and I were able to meet with Dr. Karla N. Washington, Editor in Chief of Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools to discuss papers in our clinical forum: Children’s communication and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). 

 https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2026/04/lshss-special-issue-on-convention-on.html

 

Kangaroos at The Treehouse

The kangaroos have come onto campus for spring. We even had two hop by The Treehouse this week!

United Nations recommends the Equal Earth world map

I am delighted that last week (4th September 2026) the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to change their world map from the Mercator projection (created in 1569) to the Equal Earth projection aimed at "a more accurate representation" of the world: https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168284

The UN Equal Earth projection is here: https://www.un.org/geospatial/content/map-world-1

Equal Earth projection adopted by the United Nations 

I have long advocated for using an equal earth projection of the world. In the Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World (McLeod, 2026) I had bespoke maps made for each chapter (language/dialect) using this projection - and an explanation and comparison with the Mercator projection is outlined in chapter 1.

Here is a map from my book showing the distribution of Afrikaans:

 

50 ASHA journal publications

I have published 50 articles in American Speech-Language-Hearing Association journals. Here is a summary of these publications

 https://pubs.asha.org/action/doSearch?ContribRaw=McLeod%2C+Sharynne

I am very proud that more than one quarter (28%) are with my students as first authors. 

From Mike Cannon: Senior Director, Serial Publications and Editorial Services
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 

Dr. Sharynne McLeod is a Distinguished Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition at Charles Sturt University in Australia. She has received honors from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and served six times on the ASHA Convention Program Committee. She has served as an editorial board member for ASHA journals, was the lead author on articles that received ASHA Journals Editor’s Awards in 2018 and 2019, and has received worldwide acclaim for transformative research on communication rights.

Dr. McLeod has authored or co-authored 50 articles in ASHA journals, dating back to 1994. Together, these articles have amassed more than 2,800 citations and have been read more than 700,000 times. One article, "Children's English Consonant Acquisition in the United States: A Review," which she co-authored with Dr. Kathryn Crowe and published in American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (AJSLP) in 2020, has recently surpassed 300,000 downloads,  and "Children's Consonant Acquisition in 27 Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Review," co-authored with Dr. Kathryn Crowe and published in the November 2018 issue of AJSLP) surpassed the 200,000-download mark.  

 Here is my acceptance speech

I am so grateful to ASHA for the honour of receiving the Kawana Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publications. This award has been previously won by people who have shaped my research and career including Larry Shriberg, Ray Kent, and Marc Fey. While most people who have won this award are from the United States, two of my Australian colleagues have also won this award in 2014: Mark Onslow and Ann Packman.

I’m proud to have published 50 articles in ASHA journals (so far…) including receiving ASHA Editor’s Awards – in JSLHR and AJSLP. I am honoured to have written these 50 papers with 110 different co-authors. My colleague, Kathryn (Kate) Crowe and I published two papers about children’s consonant acquisition that have had over half a million downloads influencing research, policy and practice around the world. Building research capacity is a focus of my work and 30% (15) of the papers have my PhD students as first authors. Other colleagues who have co-authored a number of ASHA journal articles include: Sarah Verdon, Elise Baker, Jane McCormack, Kate Margetson, Sarah Masso, Helen Blake, Suzanne Hopf, Ben Pham, Linda Harrison, Cen Wang, Van Tran, Nicole McGill, and Karla Washington. ASHA journals are such an important place to publish high quality evidence that can change children’s lives.  They have a substantial global reach across North America and the entire world. Thank you for publishing our work and for this important recognition.