Background and Qualifications

In 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 a speech 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 and management experience. Her research interests are in the areas of developmental speech and language disorders, lived experience of service users, evidence-based practice, person-centred care and qualitative methodologies. She has co-edited two books on qualitative research in communication disorders and has published her research in  international peer-reviewed journals. She has won three editors prizes for research papers. 

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; Member of Child Language Committee 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