Background and QualificationsIn February 2003, Rena Lyons was appointed by NUI Galway, as a Senior Lecturer, to establish a new BSc degree programme in speech and language therapy. Prior to this position, she worked as aspeech and language therapy manager in Community Services in the HSE (formerly known as the Western Health Board) from 1998-2003, as a senior speech and language therapist from 1991-1998 and as a basic grade therapist from 1987-1991. She has a broad range of clinical experience with children and adults with developmental speech and language impairments and voice disorders. In addition to clinical experience, she has experience of management and planning of services for people with communication disability.Her research interests are in the areas of developmental speech and language disorders, listening to the perspectives of service users, evidence-based practice, and qualitative methodologies. She has published her research in peer-reviewed international journals. She has won three editors prizes for her papers: two prizes for papers in the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (2017, 2023)and a prize for her paper in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research (2018). She is a peer reviewer for a number of international journals.

Qualifications

2014 PhD,University of West England

2011 Narrative Inquiry, Karolinska University, Sweden (Masters level module)

2008 Listening to Children: Research and Consultation, University of Edinburgh (Masters level module)

2006 Postgrad. Cert. in Teaching amp; Learning at Third Level, Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching, NUI Galway

1999 MSc by Research (part-time), University of Dublin, TCD

1987 BSc (Hons) in Remedial Linguistics (First class Honours); gold medal awarded, University of Dublin, Trinity College Dublin

Membership of Professional Associations

Member of the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists (IASLT); registered with CORU; member of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics

Teaching Responsibilities:

Undergraduate and postgraduate teaching responsibilities include: Professional Studies, Developmental Speech and Language Disorders, Voice Disorders, Evidence-Based Practice. Rena also supervises undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations.

Developmental speech and language disorders, qualitative research, service delivery models,listening to the perspectives of people with communication disorders, communicative participation, evidence-based practice, evaluating the outcomes of intervention, sociocultural perspectives in communication disorders.  

My teaching interests are:Developmental language impairmentsVoice disordersEvidence based practiceHealth promotion and speech and language therapySocial model of disabilityQualitative researchEthicsResearch methods