Yvonne Wren – Inaugural Lecture

Colleagues, students, collaborators, friends, and family are warmly invited.

This event will be livestreamed, with access details shared here on the day. No ticket is required to watch the livestream; tickets are only needed for in-person attendance.

Humans are natural communicators. From our very first words to the conversations that shape our daily lives, speech allows us to share ideas, build relationships, and understand the world around us. But what really happens when we speak—and what happens when that ability is disrupted?

In this inaugural lecture, I will take you on a journey through my career in speech and human communication research, from its early beginnings to leading multidisciplinary teams in world-leading studies and supporting the next generation of researchers.

Drawing on my own work and that of colleagues, we’ll uncover the fascinating science behind how speech is produced—and explore the real-life challenges faced by people whose ability to communicate is affected by conditions such as cleft palate, stroke, or cancer.

Join me for an insightful and thought-provoking talk as we discover how humans transform breath into voice, words into meaning, and conversation into connection—and why communication matters more than we might think.

Yvonne Wren is Professor of Speech and Communication at Bristol Dental School and Director of the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit at North Bristol NHS Trust. She leads research in cleft lip and palate at the University of Bristol, including two major national studies, The Cleft Collective Cohort Study and Cleft@18–23, alongside the MISLToe programme and Prosiect Pengwin, which has developed bilingual tools to support surveillance of children’s early speech and language development.

After completing a degree in Speech Pathology at the University of Manchester, Yvonne worked for ten years as a speech and language therapist in Liverpool and Bristol. Her clinical work across hospitals, community settings, and schools led to a specialist interest in Speech Sound Disorder.

She later completed a funded PhD at the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Research Unit, working with Professor Sue Roulstone and Professor Chris Jarrold, where she developed innovative, internationally used software to support children’s speech development. In 2011, she joined The Cleft Collective Cohort Study, led by Professor Jonathan Sandy, later becoming Chief Investigator and leading one of the world’s largest cleft research programmes.

Yvonne has established extensive national and international collaborations, founding the Child Speech Disorder Research Network and chairing the Child Speech Committee of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (2016–2022). Her work has been widely recognised, including the RCPCH PIER Prize (2020) and Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (2022).

If you have any queries about this event or require additional support, please contact Hazel or Annie at [email protected] at the earliest opportunity and we will endeavour to meet your requirements. For accessibility guidance for the Wills Memorial Building, please see this link AccessAble - Your Accessibility Guide.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher [email protected]