We are really pleased to announce that Dr Kate Swinburn joins the LUNA team this week! Kate takes up the position of Project Manager. Read about Kate’s background below. We are thrilled to have her onboard, and looking forward to starting our next and final phase of LUNA this week.
Dr Kate Swinburn
Twitter: @KateSwinburn
Dr Kate Swinburn is a freelance academic and will be project manager for the final stages of the LUNA project. She qualified from City University as a speech and language therapist in 1987 and worked for the NHS for 15 years in acute, rehab and community settings specialising in adult neurology. She moved into the voluntary sector in 2003, to work at Connect – the communication disability network for 10 years writing & delivering training, writing & editing publications, and advocating for people with aphasia in national policy arenas. Her academic contributions have always run alongside her paid employment. Her academic interests focus on people with acquired communication disability (particularly those with aphasia and dementia), working alongside them during co-produced projects, and integrating the social model of disability into the research agenda, especially into outcome measurement. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, and book chapters and she has presented at national and international conferences. Kate was awarded her PhD from City University in 2004. She has published two notable outcomes measures: the Comprehensive Aphasia Test (the CAT: Swinburn, Porter, Howard 2006), and the Aphasia Impact Questionnaire (the AIQ: Swinburn 2018). She is a member of Working Group 2 Assessment & Outcomes, within the international network Collaboration of Aphasia Trialists, where she is supporting the adaptation of both the CAT and the AIQ into 17 international language adaptations (currently). She was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in 2012. Currently she is an honorary lecturer at University College London and is a consultant working on curriculum development for St George’s University of London medical school. Kate was drawn to the LUNA project by both the team and the resource. She was impressed by the merging of evidence-based practice and painstaking co-production. She is excited to be able to bring her experience to the final stages of what she believes will be a fantastically practical and accessible resource for therapists and people with aphasia alike.