I worked for many years as a speech and language therapist, working at first with pre-school children and eventually specialising in dysphasia.  After a master's degree in London, my first research post was at the Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge, working with John Morton and Karalyn Patterson looking at effectiveness of anomia therapy.  In 1989 I was awarded a PhD from City University, supervised by Karalyn Patterson, for research applying cognitive neuropsychological models to categorise auditory comprehension disorders in aphasia.  Before coming to the University of Limerick I worked at UCL, London, the University of York and the University of Newcastle.

At Newcastle my research centred on sentence processing disorders and phonological output disorders in naming.  With David Howard and Anne Whitworth I worked with colleagues in Tokyo to develop a Japanese Aphasia Battery (SALA).  With David Howard I obtained funding from the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia to establish an Aphasia Clinic at the University, which continues to offer 3-month blocks of intensive therapy to people with aphasia.  I was instrumental in setting up the North East Trust for Aphasia which raises money to provide more long term support for people with aphasia.

In 2005 I became Professor of Speech and Language Therapy at the University of Limerick, having earlier carried out the initial set up of the MSc in Speech and Language Therapy (Professional Qualification) at Limerick.  My current research interests are aphasia (anomia treatment, effective services) and secondary school language interventions (SLT/Teacher collaborations, effective interventions).