Biography

Dr. Sharynne McLeod is a Distinguished Professor at Charles Sturt University, specializing in speech and language acquisition. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia and President of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association. Dr. McLeod has been an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She is recognized as Australia's Research Field Leader in Audiology, Speech, and Language Pathology and was named the best in the world in 2019 and 2023.

Her research emphasizes the communication rights of children, advocating at the United Nations and providing expertise to the World Health Organization. Dr. McLeod's work includes studying speech acquisition in monolingual and multilingual children, the prevalence of speech sound disorders, and their impact on policy and services. She has been an invited speaker at numerous international conferences and her Multilingual Children’s Speech website offers resources in over 80 languages.