Project Team

Chief Investigators

Professor Sharynne McLeod

Professor Sharynne McLeod Sharynne McLeod is professor of speech and language acquisition at Charles Sturt University. She is an elected Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia, has received Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, was Vice President of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association, founding chair of the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech, has held a number of roles in the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, and was editor of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She specialises in multilingual children's speech acquisition and children with speech sound disorders. Professor McLeod has been an invited speaker at conferences and universities in Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey, UK, US, and Vietnam.

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Dr Sarah Verdon

Dr Sarah Verdon Dr Sarah Verdon is a discipline lead and senior lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She is co-chair of The International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech and oversaw the development the Speech Pathology Australia national position paper and clinical guidelines for "culturally responsive practice in speech pathology". Her research focuses on the development of a culturally responsive workforce and supporting the communication of children from diverse backgrounds.

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Project officers

Dr Cen Audrey Wang

Dr Cen Audrey Wang

Dr Audrey Wang is the project officer of the Vietspeech study at Charles Sturt university and responsible for quantitative data collection analyses

With a background in educational psychology, her research focuses on children’s academic and social emotional development and the associated factors.

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Dr Van Tran

Van Tran Dr Van Tran is a post-doctoral scholar and was a PhD candidate in the VietSpeech project. She is also a linguist and a NAATI-accredited translator. She has been teaching English Language and Linguistics at University of Wollongong and Translation and Interpreting at Western Sydney University. Her research has been focussing on discourse analysis, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and  home language maintenance and children’s speech and language acquisition.

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Kate Margetson

Kate Margetson Kate Margetson is a project officer for the VietSpeech research team and a PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University. She has worked as a speech pathologist supporting children and families in south west Sydney for almost 10 years. She has also been a volunteer speech pathology trainer in Vietnam for a year with Trinh Foundation and Kianh Foundation.

Consultant

Dr Ben Phạm, Ha Noi National University, Vietnam

Dr Ben Phạm Dr Ben Phạm is a lecturer at the Division of Speech-Language and Hearing Impairment, Faculty of Special Education, Ha Noi National University of Education, Viet Nam and is an adjunct research fellow at Charles Sturt University (December 2018 - December 2021). Her research focuses on Vietnamese-speaking children’s speech acquisition. She is the first author of the Vietnamese Speech Assessment and is a member of The International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech.

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Research Assistants

Lily To

Lily ToLily To is a bilingual speech pathologist and recently graduated as a speech pathology honours student from the University of Sydney. Lily has been involved in several community events in the Vietnamese-speaking community, and she is interested in learning more about speech and language development in Vietnamese-English speaking children. She hopes to make positive contributions to the community by engaging in projects that will have a meaningful impact on the current understanding of how Vietnamese-English speaking children communicate.

Kylie Huynh

Kylie HuynhKylie Huynh is a bilingual speech pathologist and recently graduated as a speech pathology honours student from the University of Sydney. Her research interests include the assessment and outcome measurement for children with speech sound disorders. Kylie has been working closely with children and families of Vietnamese-speaking background to assist in delivering speech therapy service. She is committed to learning more about assessing speech sound acquisition in Vietnamese-Australian children

Katherine White

Katherine White Katherine White is a speech pathologist currently working in Sydney. She has worked with children with a range of communication and feeding difficulties for the past 12 years in education settings, public health and in private practice. Katherine has a particular interest in supporting children with speech, language and complex communication needs.

Sarah Faulks

Sarah Faulks

Sarah Faulks is a final year Speech-Language Pathology student at Charles Sturt University.
She is undertaking honours during her undergraduate degree, working with language analysis of bilingual Vietnamese-English children.

Evelyn Sowter

Evelyn Sowter Evelyn Sowter has long-standing experience in administration and data management across a range of sectors.