Dr

Georgia Niolaki

Personal statement

Dr Georgia Niolaki is a Senior Lecturer in SpLD/Dyslexia and Inclusion at Bath Spa University and Visiting Research Associate at the Institute of Education, University of London. She is a Professional Member of the British Psychological Society, the Experimental Psychological Society and the British Dyslexia Association (she holds AMBDA and AMBDA FE/HE). She's a Trustee of the British Dyslexia Association and the North Warwickshire & Coventry Dyslexia Association, and Deputy Adult Representative of the Local Dyslexia Association Board.

Georgia started her career working with children in primary education and assessing and supporting children with special needs. Since 2011 she's been teaching in Higher Education, and she is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Georgia has published a number of papers in national and international journals and presented her work at many conferences. She is the Principal Investigator on educational/literacy research projects funded by several organisations, such as the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants, The British Academy.

Georgia’s mission is to support individuals who struggle with literacy and help the world become an inclusive environment for everyone!

Academic qualifications

• (2015-2016) University of Birmingham, PGCert Language Literacies and Dyslexia, AMBDA primary and FE/HE, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
• (2014-2015) Coventry University, PGCert, Teaching in HE, Coventry, England, United Kingdom
• (2010-2014) University College London, PhD, Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics, London, England, United Kingdom
• (2007-2009) University College London, MA Literacy Learning and Literacy Difficulties, London, United Kingdom
• (1994-1998) University of Thrace, BA (Hons) Primary Education, Greece

Professional memberships

• Member of The British Psychological Society (BPS) (CPsychol 352541)
• Member of The British Dyslexia Association (BDA)
• Member of the European Association of Developmental Psychology (EADP)
• Member of the UK Literacy Association (UKLA)
• Member of the Patoss
• Member of the SpLD Assessment Standards Committee (SASC) 2016 – present
• Member of the Experimental Psychological Society (EPS) 2018-present
• Member of the Scientific Society for Research on Learning Disorders 2020-present
• Member of The Society of Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR)

Other external roles

• Trustee of the British Dyslexia Association
• Trustee of the North Warwickshire & Coventry Dyslexia Association
• Deputy Adult Representative of the Local Dyslexia Association Board
• AMBDA primary/secondary & AMBDA FE/HE
• Visiting Research Associate IoE, UCL
• Hourly Paid Lecturer (Research project supervision), School of Psychology, Coventry University

Guest Reviewer for Journals:

• Journal of Research in Reading 2012-present
• PLOS one 2012-present
• Writing Systems research 2012-present
• Journal of Applied school psychology 2019-present
• Journal of Educational Computing Research 2020
• Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal (LDCJ) 2020
• International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 2020
• British Journal of Educational Psychology 2020
• Reading & Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2021
• Frontiers in Educational Psychology 2020- present

External Examiner:

• MRes Thesis Examination Macquarie University, Sydney 2018
• PhD Thesis Examination Macquarie University, Sydney 2020
• MRes Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Literature Review Examination, University of Amsterdam, 2019

External Reviewer for Grant proposals:

• RESEARCH PROMOTION FOUNDATION’S IRIS (H2020) 2018
• RESEARCH PROMOTION FOUNDATION’S IRIS (H2020) 2019

Teaching specialisms

SpLDs (i.e., Dyslexia), Literacy (reading and spelling) Development, Educational Psychology

Impact

BiLex: A Psycholinguistic Database for Bilingual Children (see more)

• Funder: Early Career Researcher Funding Schemes: 2016-17, Pump-prime funding
• Value:£8,288.14
• Collaborators: Georgia Niolaki, Aris Terzopoulos
• Project Objectives: The aim of the proposed project is to develop an online open access developmental word database, BiLex, for bilingual children learning Greek or English as an additional language. Its template will be HelexKids, the online word database for Greek 6-12 years old monolingual children.
  
  

A new spelling test for primary school children (see more)

• Funder: BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants
• Value: £9,994.40
• Collaborators: Georgia Niolaki, Janet Vousden, Laura Taylor, Professor Jackie Masterson
• Project Team:Georgia Niolaki, Janet Vousden, Laura Taylor, Luisa Tarczynski-Bowles, Donna-Lyn Sepherd & Lauren Debney
• Project objectives: Research in spelling is sparse in comparison to reading; this is the case although children, adolescents and adults significantly underperform in spelling and spelling difficulties are not easily mitigated in comparison to reading. We are interested in the development of a new spelling battery for primary school children. This new test will include a large number of different psycholinguistic variables and will have the potential to be an effective tool for spelling intervention studies.

Other projects

• British Psychological Society Undergraduate Research Assistantship Scheme 2019 £1,600 payment for Alexandra Negoita (Research Student) to work on the project ‘Every Letter Counts in the New Interpretive Spelling Test for Primary School Children’
• British Psychological Society Undergraduate Research Assistantship Scheme 2020 £2,200 payment for Isabella Barry (Research Student) to work on the project ‘Is it hair or hare? What predicts spelling skill using a New Interpretive Spelling Test for Primary School Children’