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Teresa Lynch and Prof. Isabelle Heyerick (Centre for Deaf Studies) are awarded the Trinity INC Fund for their project “Opening up: bringing authentic diversity & inclusivity into the Bachelor in Deaf Studies curriculum”.

Enhancing Speech and Language Therapy through AI (ESTA) is an exciting collaborative project between researchers in Trinity College Dublin and National College of Ireland. Funded through Science Foundation Ireland’s OurTech Challenge, project ESTA aims to create a technology platform to improve the service delivery of speech and language therapy for children.

Congratulations to Prof. Yvonne Lynch who was recently awarded the prestigious Trinity Excellence in Teaching Award by the Provost. These awards recognise and celebrate those who have made an outstanding contribution in the pursuit of teaching excellence. Prof. Lynch is an Assistant Professor in Speech and Language Pathology in the School’s Department of Clinical Speech and Language Studies

Congratulations to CLCS PhD student Bruno Spadi who has been awarded College’s prestigious A.J. Leventhal Scholarship to help fund his forthcoming fieldwork. Supervised by Prof. Valentina Colasanti, Bruno’s doctoral research investigates the syntax of the endangered local languages spoken in Sicily.

Our School’s Centre for English Language Learning and Teaching (CELLT) is partnering with Duolingo’s research program on English usage in higher education. A new anonymous stakeholder survey for Trinity students and staff will investigate the importance of different types of English language skills in current university life. Upon completion of the survey, the first 600 student participants can select one international charity, and Duolingo will donate USD25 on their behalf to Doctors without Borders, The Red Cross, or UNHCR (The UN Refugee Agency).

Prof. Valentina Colasanti has been awarded a grant by Enterprise Ireland for her research on gestures in the languages spoken in Italy from a formal perspective. Prof. Colasanti's research focuses on syntactic variation, Romance microvariation, syntactic change, syntax-pragmatics interface, and fieldwork methodologies.

Prof. Ciarán Kenny is proud to announce this event taking part of World Voice Day 2023. This event will feature expert panellists from both healthcare and the performing arts. The event will teach audience members about how to recognise and manage throat and jaw problems, when to seek help, and will demonstrate practical advice and exercises for self-management.

The Department of Clinical Speech and Language Studies invites colleagues to attend our annual Postgraduate Research Showcase. This event is free and delegates are welcome to join live or via Zoom. It provides an opportunity to learn about the latest developments in several areas of practice related to both dysphagia and voice.

Prof. Ciarán Kenny and colleagues from Food and Nutritional Sciences in UCC collaborated to produce four recipe books. These books optimise nutrition in individuals with cancer who have difficulties with eating, drinking or swallowing. Such difficulties are very common in people with head, neck and oesophageal cancer in particular. The recipe books are provided free of charge to clinical sites and are provided by Speech and Language Therapists or Dieticians to their patients. The provision of these booklets at no cost was made possible through funding from Breakthrough Cancer Research.

A new research project conducted by Prof. John Bosco Conama entitled "Let's, let's stay together" has received funding to investigate personal and family relationships within the deaf community in Ireland. The project aims to understand the importance and nature of different personal relationships within the deaf community, especially those relationships which use Irish Sign Language (ISL), through census research and an examination of personal relationships in contemporary society via anonymous survey

Invitation to attend an international showcase of best practices in the use of African languages in Higher Education in South African. Part of the EU BAQONDE project, this one-hour event will include a series of short presentations by leading language practitioners. Hosted by Prof. Lorna Carson (Trinity College Dublin) and Prof. Bassey Antia (University of the Western Cape), it will be of interest to a wide audience and assumes no prior knowledge. Topics include translanguaging in a bilingual environment, embedding multilingualism in the curriculum, and training multilingual health practitioners. Online via Zoom at 12.30pm on Friday 3 February 2023.

Research from the WFP-Trinity partnership was presented at COP27 in a session led by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Preliminary findings from the SDG2 chapter of the forthcoming UN report on Disability and Development were shared – a chapter co-authored by Trinity researchers, WFP staff and colleagues from other agencies with the support of UNDESA. The full report will be published in June 2023, including in accessible formats. Esther Breffka, a researcher and an alum of the Trinity Masters in Development Practice, who represented Trinity and WFP on the panel, said “the preliminary findings of the multi-country analysis shows a disproportionate impact of food insecurity on persons with disabilities. Data from nine African countries reflects a truly global picture, showing that on average, 51% of adults with disabilities live in food insecure households as compared to 38% of adults without disabilities.”. Prof. Caroline Jagoe added that “disability-inclusive food systems change is an undeniable human rights requirement and window of opportunity for sustainable development”. Acknowledgment: The work presented is an output of the funded partnership with the UN World Food Programme.

Prof. Caroline Jagoe has secured funding from the Irish Research Council for a life-changing project entitled Co-Construct. The project addresses communication access for people with communication disabilities. Communication access is the communicative equivalent of a ramp for wheelchair users to access a building, in that the access is achieved by addressing the barriers to inclusion, rather than aiming to ‘fix’ the impairment. Co-Construct will generate a highly ambitious corpus of naturalistic conversations, captured across two languages (English and Arabic) and five clinical groups, using wearable camera and eye-gaze technology. A qualitative analysis, triangulating conversational reactions, gaze and interview responses will, for the first time, reveal the pragmatic impact of communication access strategies in the ‘natural habitat’ of conversation.

We are happy to share details of a new free guide published by the INCLUDEED project team at Trinity College Dublin along with partners from five other European universities. Designed to be a very practical and readable handbook, the guide aims to support organisations and individuals in meeting the language needs of migrant learners in a positive and self-sustaining way. As well as a focus on language teaching in a context of migration, it gives a potted account of relevant applications from research/policy/practice from areas such as applied linguistics, education and psychology.