Academy Fellow

Recognised in the top 250 Australian Researchers List 3 years in a row, in 2019 the Australian Newspaper named Distinguished Professor McLeod World Leader in Audiology, Speech and Language Pathology. This international achievement reflected her legacy of leading teams to undertake ground-breaking impactful international research into multilingual children’s speech and communication rights and building world-class research capacity. 

Distinguished Professor McLeod’s extensive cross-linguistic research has led to a significant advance of knowledge with multilingual children and families, providing English-speaking professionals with integrated knowledge and resources to work in languages that they do not speak. Her Multilingual Children’s Speech website provides access to over 1,300 evidence-based resources in 131 languages and dialects including the validated Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) in 71 languages. A key impact of her decades of work with multilingual children has been to consolidate knowledge of speech acquisition across languages. She has created and researched innovative co-design methodologies for listening to children with SLCN informed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Speech Participation and Activity Assessment–Children (SPAA-C) increases children’s capacity to participate in decision-making and Children Draw Talking methods facilitate incorporation of children’s voice in participatory research. Her research on prevalence, assessment, intervention, and service delivery has moved international practices from a medical model to focussing on functioning and participation.  

Professor Sharynne McLeod is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, has been an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and awarded ARC Discovery and Linkage Grants focussing on children's speech. She was the first international recipient of the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association and is a Life Member of Speech Pathology Australia.

Professor McLeod is President of the International Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics Association (ICPLA). She is the founding chair of both the Child Speech Committee of the International Association of Communication Sciences (IALP) and the International Expert Panel on Multilingual Children's Speech. She was founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology (Taylor & Francis) (2005-2013) and edited a special issue on communication rights which she presented at the United Nations in 2019. Professor McLeod has provided expertise into the children and youth version of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and the Rehabilitation Competency Framework for the World Health Organization. She is on the editorial board of journals including: International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics; Child Language Teaching and Therapy; Advances in Communication and Swallowing; and Speech, Language and Hearing. She is a Board Certified Member of the American Board of Child Language and Language Disorders.

Professor McLeod is a transformative mentor for rural, first-generation, and women scholars, building research capacity and positioning these innovative social science researchers as leaders. Her students have been awarded with: Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship, Churchill Fellowship, ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA), Endeavour Postgraduate Scholarship, Australian Awards Scholarship, Sir Robert Menzies Research Scholarship, NSW/ACT Young Achievers Award for Science Leadership, SCOPUS Young Researcher Award for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Distinguished Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition, Charles Sturt University

Director, Children's Voices Centre, Charles Sturt University

2025, Honorary Doctorate, University of Patras, Greece

2025, Honored Member, International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP)

2021, Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales

2021, Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

2015, Life Member, Speech Pathology Australia

2010 & 2013, Charles Sturt University Vice Chancellor’s Research Higher Degree Supervision Excellence Award (individual)

2009, Australian Research Council Future Fellow

2008, Fellow, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

2007, Fellow, Speech Pathology Australia

2007, Australian Government Carrick (ALTC) Citation

2010, Charles Sturt University Vice Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award (team)

2002, Charles Sturt University Vice Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence (team)

1999, The University of Sydney Excellence in Teaching Award (individual) 

1. McLeod, S. (Ed.) (2026). The Oxford handbook of speech development in languages of the world. Oxford University Press.

2. McLeod, S., & Crowe, K. (2018). Children’s consonant acquisition in 27 languages: A cross-linguistic review. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(4), 1546–1571. https://doi.org/10.1044/2018_AJSLP-17-0100

3. McLeod, S. (2018). Communication rights: Fundamental human rights for all. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 20(1), 3–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2018.1428687

4. McLeod, S., Baker, E., McCormack, J., Wren, Y., Roulstone, S., Crowe, K., Masso, S., White, P., & Howland, C. (2017). Cluster-randomized controlled trial evaluating the effectiveness of computer-assisted intervention delivered by educators for children with speech sound disorders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60(7), 1891–1910. https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-S-16-0385

5. McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & McCormack, J. (2012). Intelligibility in Context Scale: Validity and reliability of a subjective rating measure. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 648–656. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0130)