Lucy Hughes
Research Speech and Language Therapist
Specialist topics: Developmental Language Disorder; Speech & Language Research; Conversation therapy
Lucy is a Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist with over 15 years’ clinical experience. Her doctoral research involved designing and trialling a new intervention for children with Developmental Language Disorder, which targets their everyday conversation skills. Lucy was employed as a Research Associate on the Word Retrieval and Development (WoRD) project, a research study which evaluated interventions for children with word-finding difficulties.
As a practitioner, she has worked with children and their carers across mainstream and special schools, health centres and pre-school language units. She also supports student therapists in her role as a Lecturer and Clinical Tutor at Reading University. Prior to retraining as an SLT, Lucy worked as a journalist and television producer, and completed an undergraduate degree in modern languages.
To arrange an interview with any member of our team, please contact James Skitt, Marketing & Communications Officer on 01883 719021 or use our contact form.
Glisson, L., Tutty, R., Heine, C., Burke, C., Hughes, L., Dawson, N., & Ebbels, S. (in press). Morphemes matter: A small scale randomised control trial of vocabulary intervention focusing on affixes for adolescents with (developmental) language disorder. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 1-19. doi: 10.1080/17549507.2025.2526539. Link. Accepted version.
Burridge, D., Hughes, L., Titterington, J., Dawson, N., & Ebbels, S. (2024) Daily living skills in adolescents with and without language disorder, measured using the WHEEL OF INDEPENDENCE framework. British Journal of Occupational Therapy. 87(12):742-752. doi: 10.1177/03080226241280732
Ebbels, S. H., Gadd, M., Nicoll, H., Hughes, L., Dawson, N., Burke, C., Calder, S. & Frizelle, P. (2024). The effectiveness of individualized morphosyntactic target identification and explicit intervention using the SHAPE CODING system for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and the impact of within-session dosage. Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 55, 803-837. Link. Accepted version. Poster.
Hughes, L., Newton, C., Corrin, J., & Best, W. (2025). “Better Conversations With Developmental Language Disorder”: Feasibility and Findings From an Initial Evaluation of a Novel Intervention. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 1–32. doi: https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_AJSLP-24-00448
Hughes, L., Corrin, J., Newton, C. and Best, W.(2022) ‘Where does Granny live?’ The role of test questions in conversational remembering between mothers and their children with developmental language disorder. Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders. doi: 10.1558/jircd.20235
Best, W., Hughes, L., Masterson, J., Thomas, M. S. C., Howard, D., Kapikian, A., & Shobbrook, K. (2020). Understanding differing outcomes from semantic and phonological interventions with children with word-finding difficulties: a group and case series study. Cortex. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2020.09.030
Best, W., Hughes, L. M., Masterson, J., Thomas, M., Fedor, A., Roncoli, S., . . . Kapikian, A. (2018). Intervention for children with word-finding difficulties: A parallel group randomised control trial. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. doi:10.1080/17549507.2017.1348541
Best, W., Fedor, A., Hughes, L., Kapikian, A., Masterson, J., Roncoli, S., . . . Thomas, M. S. C. (2015). Intervening to alleviate word-finding difficulties in children: case series data and a computational modelling foundation. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 1-36. doi:10.1080/02643294.2014.1003204
Hughes, L., & Best, W. (2023) Future Directions. In: Beeke, S., & Bloch, S. (Eds.), Better Conversations with Communication Difficulties : A Practical Guide for Clinicians (pp. 83-92). J&R Press Ltd.
