I am keynote speaker at the International Society of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech (ISMBS) conference in Chania, Greece (16-19 June 2025). Details of my keynote address are below. Dr Helen Blake and I are also presenting a paper titled: "Audio and
video recordings supporting multilingual children's speech" and Helen is
co-presenting a poster with her PhD student.
There are 52 oral presentations and 21 posters with attendees from 26 countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR China, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Moldovia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Taiwan, The Netherlands, UAE, UK, USA).
Prof Elena Babastouli ended her opening address with the following quote: "Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises" (Demosthenes).
It is always great to share knowledge with colleagues from across the world - and this conference in Chania is special.
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| The ISMBS conference venue on the Chania harbour |
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| Sharynne and Helen Blake at the Arsenal |
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| Sharynne's keynote |
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| Colleagues who have written chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World from Wales, Poland, Cyprus and Greece |
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| Prof Elena Babatsouli (ISMBS chair), Sharynne and Prof Kakia Petinou Κάκια Πετεινού (ISMBS committee) |
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| Helen presenting her paper with Sharynne cheering in the background |
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 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.
