Internships

The LuCiD Internship Scheme provides early career researchers with the opportunity to oversee and fund a student project and gives undergraduate students from one of our north-west universities the opportunity to gain experience and insight into scientific research. The awards last for 6 weeks during the summer holiday.

Award Recipients

2023

Intern: Ciara Dutton
Supervisors: Dr Jacky Chan and Dr Shijie Zhang
Project: 1) Putting lexical cues into context: An eye-tracking study of young children’s processing of relative clauses (WP2.2) and 2) The effect of information structure on children’s and adults’ production of adverbial clauses (WP2.3)

Intern: Jada Mattis
Supervisors: Dr Jill Lany
Project: Statistical Word Segmentation in British-English Learning 8-Month-Olds

Intern: Jessica Knight
Supervisors: Dr Samantha Durrant and Dr Jenny Freed
Project: Assessing reception children’s inference-making: the effect of story test format in listening comprehension

Intern: Maha Sweetha Shanmugam
Supervisors: Prof Padraic Monaghan
Project: Investigating quality of language in children’s YouTube videos 

Intern: Isabelle Bourgois
Supervisors: Dr Perrine Brusini
Project: Testing the limit of syllabic prediction

2022

Intern: Orlaith Kelly
Supervisors: Dr Kelly Burgoyne and Dr Laura Boundy
Project: An investigation into the effects of retrieval practice on word learning in children with Down syndrome

Intern: Amie Suthers
Supervisors: Dr Marina Bazhydai and Dr Didar Karadag
Project: 1) with primary school children using online interactive paradigm; 2) with preverbal infants at the Lancaster Babylab

Intern: Phoebe Shaw
Supervisors: Dr Jacky Chan
Project: Putting lexical cues into context: An eye-tracking study of young children’s processing of relative clauses

2021

Intern: Michelle Matheson
Supervisors: Dr Katie Twomey and Dr Samantha Durrant
Project: Linking curiosity-driven learning with language outcomes across development

Intern: Charely Walker
Supervisors: Dr Alexandra Sturrock
Project: Investigating the subtle language and communication difficulties experienced in autistic females without learning disability

Intern: Marinka Lomax
Supervisors: Dr Kelly Burgoyne
Project: Involved in a broad range of projects including data handling for PACT and drafing a storybook that targets the improvement of children’s speech sound production

Intern: Charlotte Burgar
Supervisors: Dr Andrew Jessop and Dr Samantha Durrant
Project: A meta-analysis of infant speed of processing and vocabulary development

Intern: Victoria Simpson
Supervisors: Dr Katharina Kaduk and Dr Kirsty Dunn
Project: Developing a UK language network and researching newborn responses to infant and adult directed speech

Intern: Johannes Reilly
Supervisors: Dr Jacky Chan
Project: Coding corpus data he worked on has contributed to a research paper which is currently in preparation.

2019

Intern:  Lisa Veldt, BSc English Linguistics, University of Amsterdam
Supervisors: Prof Padraic Monaghan, Lancaster University
Project: How do phonological skills of children with hearing impairment relate to their literacy development?

Intern: Meghan Pennington, BSc hons Psychology, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Prof Anna Theakston
Project: The impact of parental mind-mindedness and contingent responding on children’s later vocabulary

Intern: George Skingsley, BSc hons Speech and Language Therapy, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Dr Katie Twomey and Alexandra Sturrock
Project:  Investigating the link between category structure and Autism

2018

Intern: Lydia Ainsworth, BSc hons Psychology, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Prof Anna Theakston, Katy Finch, Heather Lemen and Kimberley Bell
Project: Complex sentences, modal verbs, and EAL pupils’ experiences of learning Modern Foreign Languages

Intern: Lizzie Green, BSc hons Speech and Language Therapy, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Dr Katie Twomey and Dr Alissa Ferry
Project:  The influence of child-directed speech on children’s acquisition of category labels

Intern: Delyth Piper, BSc hons Psychology, Lancaster University
Supervisors: Prof Padraic Monaghan
Project: The role of gesture in learning novel words

2017

Intern: Hannah Cunningham, BSc hons Psychology, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Prof Anna Theakston
Project: Complex sentences in early child language

Intern: Anna Brown, BSc hons Psychology, University of Liverpool
Supervisors: Dr Claire Noble
Project:  The ManyBabies Project at the University of Liverpool

Intern: Charlotte Rothwell, BSc hons Psychology, Lancaster University
Supervisors: Dr Rebecca Frost, Dr Katie Twomey and Dr Katie Alcock
Project: The ManyBabies Project at Lancaster University

2016

Intern: Joanna Melville, BSc hons Psychology, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Dr Laura de Ruiter
Project: The acquisition of complex syntax

Intern: Helen Ronayne, BSc hons Psychology, University of Liverpool
Supervisors: Dr Amy Bidgood
Project: Validity testing a new babble checklist

Intern: Kascha Visagie, BSc hons Psychology, Lancaster University
Supervisors: Dr Rebecca Frost
Project: How do 8 and 12 month old infants use high frequency words during language acquisition?

2015

Intern: Elizabeth Driscoll, BSc hons Psychology, University of Manchester
Supervisors: Dr Claire Noble and Dr Thea Cameron-Faulkner
Project: A good book? The grammatical properties of shared book reading

Intern: Chris Jordan, BSc hons Psychology, University of Liverpool
Supervisors: Dr Colin Bannard and Prof Julian Pine
Project: Testing statistical models of morphological learning using ‘real’ languages

Intern: Ben Malem, BSc hons Psychology, Lancaster University
Supervisors: Dr Katie Twomey
Project: Curiosity-based word learning