After completing my undergraduate degree in the School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, I was awarded an MRC studentship to study for a PhD on the topic of developmental dyslexia. I have been conducting research and lecturing in the School of Psychology at the University of Dundee since 1999. In 2009, I held a post as a Visiting Lecturer in the Unité de Recherche sur l’Evolution du Comportement et l’Apprentissage at the Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3 in France.

Lab Website: Language and Learning lab 

 My current research takes a cross-linguistic perspective on language development in relation to visual word recognition and developmental dyslexia. Recent studies have investigated the influence of speech rhythm on phonological development and the relationship between orthographic depth and rates of reading acquisition in a wide range of European languages including Danish, Finnish, Greek, Icelandic, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian Spanish and Swedish.

I have also been investigating early language development, in particular, the acquisition of knowledge about derivational morphology through collaboration with Prof. Pascale Colé (Aix-Marseille Université, France) and Prof. Séverine Casalis (Université de Lille 3, France).

My recent interest has extended to the visual word recognition skills of bilinguals and second language learners, a topic that I now work on together with Prof. Séverine Casalis and our former PhD student, Dr Eva Commissaire. 

I am committed to using a collaborative approach in my research. In 2019, I co-founded LALco: Language and Literacy: Communication, collaboration, co-production (www.lalco.org.uk) with Dr Sarah McGeown at the University of Edinburgh.  This is a multidisciplinary network of individuals with a shared interest in researching and promoting the language and literacy skills of children and young people.

I supervise undergraduate and MSc dissertatons and teach on the following modules:

MSc Research in Practice

MSc/Level 4: Reading Development and Disability

Level 3 Research Skills

Level 2: Language Development 

Level 1: Biological Psychology