Dr. Cristina Mckean

Biography

Cristina McKean is a Professor of Child Language Development and Disorders in the Department of Education. She leads interdisciplinary research with a global reach aimed at developing and evaluating public health educational practices that promote robust language development in children. Her work involves partnerships with young people, parents, professionals, and policymakers, addressing the critical health educational concern of equitable and robust language communication development. Cristina's research has produced significant contributions to theory, policy, and practice, specifically in identifying individual differences in language development and the factors affecting speech and language communication needs. She has co-edited a recent book titled 'Language Development: Individual and Social Context', bringing together the work of over 50 leading academics. Cristina is also a co-investigator on various projects focusing on language development in multilingual contexts and has led substantial international surveys on child communication needs. Furthermore, she actively conducts intervention research, develops risk assessment tools, and collaborates on initiatives to improve service provision for children with communication difficulties. Her research also emphasizes the importance of understanding the socio-relational dynamics of effective inter-agency collaboration.

Research Interests

Courses