Sharynne McLeod

Sharynne McLeod is professor of speech and language acquisition at Charles Sturt University (CSU), Australia.  She is an elected Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia, Co-Chair of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children’s Speech, and Deputy Chair of the Child Speech committee of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics and Executive Council Member of the Asia Pacific Society for Speech, Language and Hearing.

The Australian Newspaper named Professor McLeod as Australia’s Research Field Leader in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology in 2018 and “best in the world based on the quality, volume and impact of work” in 2019. She has won Editor’s Awards from the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing: Speech (2018) and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (2019).

Professor McLeod is on the editorial board of International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics and Child Language Teaching and Therapy, and Speech, Language and Hearing. She was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2009-2013). Previously she was the Vice President of the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association, board member of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, and editor of International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (2005-2013).

Professor McLeod's research focuses on monolingual and multilingual children's speech acquisition. Her Multilingual Children’s Speech website has free resources in over 60 languages. She applies the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF-CY, World Health Organization, 2007) to children with speech sound disorders and is named as the only individual in Australia to have contributed to the development of the ICF-CY (WHO, 2007, p. xxv).

Her research foregrounds the right of everyone (particularly children) to participate fully in society. In 2019, she presented a speech about communication rights at the United Nations in New York. Professor McLeod also researches the prevalence and impact of childhood speech sound disorders and links this to policy and service delivery issues. Professor McLeod has been an invited speaker at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association conventions as well as at conferences and universities in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Viet Nam, UK, US and Zambia.