Profile
My research explores the relationship between children’s environment and their early language development and educational outcomes. I primarily work with young children who grow up in diverse urban centres - exploring questions on multilingualism, acquisition of urban speech varieties, and heritage language acquisition in diaspora communities e.g., Sylheti, Somali. I employ longitudinal design, behavioural and neural (EEG) methods to track the earliest stages of language processing (acoustic-phonetic, phonology) and the relationship with later language and literacy. I work in partnership with London communities, local government, primary schools and families to develop a collaborative research programme. As a trained speech and language therapist, I am also interested in assessment and intervention in multilingual populations, in particular for children acquiring under-resourced diaspora languages. Current funded projects include: Quantifying phonetic input and speech processing in multilingual infants (2025-2029), Early language and literacy acquisition in new arrival/new to English children (2025-2028), Generations of London English (2023-2026). I co-lead the Stories from Home project, and the Tower Hamlets New Arrival/EAL schools network.
I direct the QMUL Language Acquisition Lab - you can read more about the group, our current projects, and public engagement work here. At QMUL, I am on the Civic Delivery Group, which supports the execution of QMUL’s Civic University Agreement. Outside of QMUL, I’m on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Transformation Advisory Board, and the Tower Hamlets Women’s Commission.
Publications
Browse a publication list by Dr. Kathleen McCarthy.
Rubner, K., & McCarthy, K.M., (2023) Sounds Heimish: A sociophonetic study of London’s orthodox Jewish community. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 3607-3611
Göbel, J., & McCarthy, K.M., (2023). The impact of cognitive load on speech production in German-English bilinguals. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2427-2431
McCarthy, K. M. & Skoruppa, K. (2022) Language-specific phonological skills and the relationship with reading accuracy in Sylheti-English sequential bilinguals. Child Development, 94(2), e85–e102. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13880
McCarthy, K.M. & de Leeuw, E. (2021). Prosodic patterns in Sylheti-English bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 44(2), 562-579. https://doi.org/10.1017/S027226312100036X
Kirkham, S. & McCarthy, K.M. (2020). Acquiring allophonic structure and phonetic detail in a bilingual community: The production of laterals by Sylheti-English bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingualism.
McCarthy, K.M., Skoruppa, K., & Iverson, P. (2019). Development of neural perceptual vowel spaces during the first year of life.
Scientific Reports 9: 19592.
McCarthy, K.M. & Evans, B. G (2019). The perception of familiar and unfamiliar accents by bilingual and monolingual children. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2203-2207.
Oxbury, R. & McCarthy, K.M. (2019). Acquiring a multiethnolect: the production of diphthongs by children and adolescents in West London. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2208-2212.
Sharma, D. & McCarthy, K. M. (2018). Attentional load and style control. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 24(2), 127-136.
McCarthy, K. M., Rosen, S., Mahon M., & Evans, B. G. (2014). Speech perception and production by sequential bilingual children: a longitudinal study of VOT acquisition. Child Development, 85(5), 1965-1980.
McCarthy, K. M., Evans, B.G., & Mahon, M., (2013). Acquiring a second language in an immigrant community: the production of Sylheti and English stops and vowels by London Bengali speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 41, 344-358.
McCarthy, K. M., Evans, B.G., & Mahon, M. (2011). Detailing the phonetic environment: a sociophonetic study of the London-Bengali community. Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), 1354-1357.
Mahon, M., Vickers, D., McCarthy, K. M., Barker, R., Merritt, R., Szagun, G., Mann, W., & Rajput, K (2011). Cochlear-implanted children from homes where English is an additional language: findings form a recent audit in one London centre. Cochlear Implants International, 12 (2) pp. 105-113.
