Dr Lucy Bryant is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at UTS, and a certified practising speech pathologist. She has over a decade of experience working with children and adults across community, private practice and university clinics, supporting them to develop their communication. Her passion grew from a belief that everyone should have access to the basic human right of communication, and all that comes with it in terms of social, educational, and workplace opportunities. She has a particular interest in langugae development and rehabilitation across the lifespan, and how people process, understand, and express meaning. Her work has a significant focus on technology and the opportunities for communication access and inclusion that come from new and evolving communication and information technologies. 

Lucy completed her PhD at the University of Newcastle, Australia (July 2018), examining the implementation of discourse (language sample) analysis in clinical practice for people with aphasia following stroke. In her clinical practice and research, she has focused on how we understand and formulate messages and meaning in the brain, especially after brain injury, stroke or other disability. Her work in this space helped to launch the international collaboration Focusing on the Quality of Spoken Discourse in Aphasia (FOQUS Aphasia) with colleagues in the USA and UK.

Lucy has a strong clinical and research interest in the role of technology in society and communication, and is exploring developments in technology, particularly Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Her work with technology teams at UTS and through industry has led to innovative new applications to support language learning, recovery, and access for people with communication disability across the lifespan. Lucy is the Theme Lead for Professional Practice and Education in the UTS INSIGHT Digital Health Collaborative. Her role relates to collaborative approaches to upskilling health students and professionals in the effective use of technology in their roles, to benefit all Australians who access the health system.

Her current work is split between teaching, research and working in the speech pathology clinic at UTS that gives free treatment to the public and provides students with clinical experience. Lucy’s intersecting roles across these domains give her the unique opportunity to conduct clinically meaningful research and educate the next generation of speech pathologists to support language learning, and use technology in ways that will improve access to communication.