What a joy to spend a whole day with my postdoc Dr Kate Margetson in Sydney. We had a lovely day celebrating her PhD graduation, working on her implementation science approach to disseminating the Speech Assessment of Children's Home Languages (SACHL), and planning our presentations to Hong Kong.
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| Congratulations Dr Kate Margetson! |
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| Both of my PhD graduates - Kate Margetson and Marie Ireland - are in the same graduation booklet |
I have been invited to be a plenary speaker at the International Symposium on Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) 2025 to be held 16-19 June 2025 in Chania, Crete, Greece. I have just submitted the abstract for my presentation: https://speechandlanguage.louisiana.edu/ismbs/plenary-lectures
Multilingual Minds are Unlocking Global Knowledge, γνώση, 认识, إدراك, דַעַת, ज्ञान …
Distinguished Professor Sharynne McLeod
Children’s Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Global understandings of speech, language, and communication encompass knowledge from 7,000+ languages. Communication professionals who read English have access to research and evidence-based resources, assessments, and interventions in approximately 100 languages. Critiques of psychology and linguistics report that research has focussed on English, northern hemisphere Indo-European languages (Draper et al., 2023; Kidd & Garcia, 2022), and “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies” (Henrich et al., 2010). This presentation will commend the work of multilingual minds (researchers, professionals, and translators) who provide English-language access to global knowledge about speech, language, and communication. It will outline the decade of work of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and knowledge contained within global initiatives including:
• The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World
• Multilingual Children’s Speech website (https://www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/speech-acquisition/speech-acq-studies)
• Crosslinguistic Phonology Project (https://phonodevelopment.sites.olt.ubc.ca/),
• Multilingual Families Lab Familles Multilingues (https://bilingualacquisition.wordpress.com/)
• CHILDES (https://childes.talkbank.org/) and PhonBank (https://phon.talkbank.org/)
The presentation will conclude by challenging our reliance on English as the medium for knowledge dissemination and acknowledging the future potential of our connected multilingual world for greater understandings of speech, language, and communication.
I have spent three very productive days at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) in Brisbane analysing data and writing with Dr Anna Cronin, A/Prof Jane McCormack and Caroline Tiong. During the week we also worked online with Dr Marie Ireland (in USA) and Dr Audrey Wang (in NSW). We are coming to the end of our grant with the Once Upon at Time Foundation and it has been wonderful to listen to the children's insights about their speech therapy - including what they liked and the few things that they did not enjoy. We have been writing a journal article and conference presentations during the week.
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| Sharynne, Caroline, Audrey, Anna and Jane |
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| Sharynne, Marie, Jane and Anna |
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| Jane, Sharynne and Anna at ACU in Brisbane |
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| One child with large ears listening to his speech therapist at the table |
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| A child practicing the words "zoo, today, pow" at speech therapy with a roll of stickers for good work and the speech therapist sitting on a cushion. |
Our new book - Early Childhood Voices has just arrived. It is always great to hold a new book. I am so proud of this book - a collaboration between members of the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group. It was a privilege to mentor the book editors (Linda, Andi and Jenny) to edit their first book - and to support the chapter authors - most of whom had never written a book chapter. The Preface also features my friend, Elsie Hey-Cunningham's excellent drawing of talking over Zoom.
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| Sharynne and Jane McCormack with the chapter they co-authored with Kate Crowe |
Thank you to the Australian Catholic University (ACU) who have invited me to extend my term as Adjunct Professor until 2027.
Here is what they wrote in their letter
"Australian Catholic University’s (ACU) conferral of adjunct and honorary awards recognises the accomplishment and contribution of persons who have made or will make an outstanding contribution to the achievement of the ACU's mission, to scholarship or professional practice in one or more disciplines or professions of interest to ACU, to the life and objectives of ACU, to the society and/or the Church in ways that are aligned to the mission and vision of ACU."
My postdoc, PhD and Masters students are working hard. There are so many small steps to completing a higher degree - and it is an honour to walk alongside them.
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| Holly McAlister: PhD supervisors Dr Suzanne Hopf and Prof Sharynne McLeod |
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| Cathie Matthews: Masters supervisors - Sharynne McLeod, Julian Grant, Libbey Murray |
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| Kate Margetson: Postdoc supervisor: Sharynne McLeod |
ECIR's policy impact is in SCOPUS!
https://www.scival.com/impact/policy/summary?uri=Customer/201004/ResearcherGroup/1141309
Dr Helen L. Blake and Dr Carolyn Gregoric are my essential teammates. Helen works closely with me on our Multilingual Children's Speech work and Carolyn works closely with me on the Early Childhood Interdisciplinary Research Group and the Early Childhood Voices Conference (ECV2024). They are invaluable supports. We get so much done to support our colleagues, children and families across the world. Thank you Helen and Carolyn!
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| Helen, Sharynne and Carolyn - a great team |
The 12th Annual International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD2024) https://ic-sd.org/ is being held 19-21 September 2024 in New York and online. The website states:
"The theme of the 2024 ICSD is “Solutions for the Future”. The aim of the conference is to bring together persons involved in research, policy, practice, and business, in advance of the 2024 United Nations Summit of the Future. Participants will share practical solutions for achieving the SDGs at local and national levels."
We are presented two papers:
They are available on the SDSN YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Bwtrg9IpDnypQ7t_jjAYQ
"The International Conference on Sustainable Development (ICSD) provides a forum for academia, government, civil society, UN agencies, and the private sector to come together to share practical solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."
"ICSD is the top academic international conference for discussing sustainable development issues. The parallel sessions include over 300 oral and poster presentations from researchers and development practitioners from across the world, presenting their work on topics ranging from gender equity to climate change to economic development, all focused on solutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In addition, ICSD’s plenaries allow participants to hear thought provoking speeches and conversations from leaders in the field of sustainable development. Speakers and panelists include heads of state, UN officials, CEOs, economists, and university professors. ICSD is a truly global event with programming that spans across all time zones and welcomes participants from all across the world – 149 countries in 2020 to be exact! Side events offer participants additional opportunities to meet with fellow participants, explore specific topics with more detail, and learn something new."
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| Session chairs and presenters in Session 1C "Intergenerational dialogues to improve policy and accountability at all levels of governance" |
More information about my session
1C Intergenerational dialogues to improve policy and accountability at all levels of governance
Chairs: Patrick Paul Walsh, University College Dublin; Enda Murphy, University College Dublin; Aparajita Banerjee, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
"Intergenerational dialogues bring together individuals of different age groups, and can be used to achieve numerous objectives, including improved governance. This session seeks case studies and analyses of how intergenerational dialogue can improve processes such as agenda setting, implementation, and follow up and review. The ambition is to change the discount rate, which prioritizes today over the future. Planning and implementation should embody future generations’ welfare across all policy dimensions of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental) at all levels of governance."
After the FORL congress, Prof Yvonne Wren and I visited Iguazu Falls (Foz do Iguaçu) in Brazil and Argentina. Wow! What an amazing weekend. The birds, butterflies, waterfalls and rainbows were extraordinarily colourful and brought us lots of joy.
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| Coatis are anteaters - and very common at Foz do Iguaçu |
The birds were in the Parque das Aves (Birds Park in Foz do Iguaçu), and the numerous colourful butterflies and coati were at the Falls.
Here are all of my blogposts from Brazil
While in Brazil I was able to purchase two of Brazilian Portuguese speech assessments and discuss their development and use with the authors:
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| Authors of TESF Luciana de Oliveira Pagan-Neves, Danira Tavares Francisco, and Haydée Fiszbein Wertzner |
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| Speech assessment component of the ABFW: Teste de Linguagem Infantilm |
Some of the other resources available at the FORL conference from BookToy https://www.booktoy.com.br/
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| Dr Marília Pereira (USP, Brazil), Prof Sharynne McLeod and Prof Yvonne Wren (UK) |
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| Photographs of students who have graduated from USP |
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| Visiting the Historical Museum of the Faculty of Medicine |
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| Fonoaudiologica Department |
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| Ultrasound helmet that I was involved in trialing at Queen Margaret University in the UK in 2006 |
Dr Kate Margetson graduated with her PhD today. I am a very proud supervisor of all of her accomplishments. She graduated in Sydney with Dr Van Tran and her family cheering her on. I was in Brazil about to present two keynote lectures before lunchtime - so Yvonne Wren and I contacted Kate while we ate breakfast! Congratulations Kate on your important PhD and how it is changing the world. I am honoured to present work from Kate's PhD in one of my keynote lectures in Brazil (see photos below).
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| Dr Kate Margetson |
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| Dr Van Tran congratulating Dr Kate Margetson - our two VietSpeech PhD graduates |
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| Congratulations Kate! from Yvonne Wren and myeself in Brazil |
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| Presenting work from Kate's PhD in Brazil |
I was an invited keynote speaker at the 23rd Congress of the Otolaryngology Foundation FORL https://www.congressoforl.org/. The Congress was held in São Paulo – SP Brazil, at the Frei Caneca Convention Center from 12-14 September (12 a 14 de setembro de 2024).
Here are the titles of my presentations:
The conference website indicated "There will be more than 700 speakers from 9 specialties! In addition, we will have 10 outstanding international speakers".
It was a wonderful interdisciplinary conference - enabling rich and informative presentations and conversations between audiologists, ear nose and throat surgeons, speech-language pathologists, and other disciplines from across Brazil and the world.
I also was impressed by my conversations with the students and staff from the University of Sao Paulo. I have quoted and used much of their research in the past - and look forward to learning more from them in the future.
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| Prof Sharynne McLeod (Australia), Prof Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner (Brazil), Prof Yvonne Wren (UK), |
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| Presenting one of my three keynote addresses |
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| Dr Marilia Pereira (Brazil), Prof Sharynne McLeod (Australia), Prof Yvonne Wren (UK), Prof Haydee Fiszbein Wertzner (Brazil) |
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| Discussing communication as a human right with Dr Yakubu Karagama, keynote speaker and ENT surgeon and laryngologist from Kings College University London |
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| Presenting with Marcia Keske-Soares, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (Marcia co-authored a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World) |
Here is the biographical information about me that was written in Portuguese by Dr Luciana Pagan Neves
Sharynne McLeod, Ph.D. é professor ilustre da Charles Sturt University, Austrália, especializada em fala infantil e aquisição da linguagem. Ela possui um legado de defesa dos direitos de comunicação e de liderança de equipes interdisciplinares para realizar pesquisas internacionais impactantes sobre a fala de crianças multilíngues. Ela é membro da Academia de Ciências Sociais da Austrália e atuou como editora-chefe do International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. Ela recebeu honras da American Speech-Language-Hearing Association e é membro vitalício da Speech Pathology Australia. Ela é presidente da Associação Internacional de Fonética Clínica e Linguística. O jornal australiano frequentemente a lista como Líder de Campo de Pesquisa da Austrália e Melhor do Mundo em Fonoaudiologia com base na “qualidade, volume e impacto” de suas pesquisas.
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| Luciana Bauru |
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| Gifts received by Yvonne and myself from the conference organisers! |
