Prof Marjorie Lorch

Overview

Biography

Prof Lorch received her BA in Linguistics, Anthropology, and Biology (Phi Beta Kappa) from Washington University, St. Louis and held a Grass Foundation Non-Clinical Fellowship in Neurology at Barnes Hospital. She was a postgraduate student in Linguistics at University College London, and completed a Ph.D. in Language Behavior (Neurolinguistics) at Boston University while a Research Assistant at the Aphasia Research Center, Boston Veterans Hospital.  

She joined Birkbeck initially in 1986 as a part-time Lecturer and Research Officer, and became a full-time staff member in 1991.  She had a long-standing research collaboration at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. 

Prof Lorch’s interdisciplinary research addresses questions regarding the mental construction of language, speech, voice, reading and writing from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. She has investigated the nature of language as a human biological endowment through evidence from neurological disorder and development; cross-linguistic and multilingual aspects of neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic processing; and the relation of language to music and literacy.  One major research strand focuses on 19th century approaches to the understanding of language function and disorder, acquisition and learning in the context of the emerging disciplines of linguistics, neurology, psychology and education.  

Her programme of research involves numerous international cross-disciplinary collaborations with medical practitioners, psychologists, speech and language therapists, educators and historians. She has had Visiting Research Fellowships at the Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Forschung in Bielefeld; University of California in Los Angeles; the Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Visiting Professor of Science and Society, Emory University; the Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University; Duke University; and Loyola University, Chicago.

Prof Lorch was appointed to the sub-panel for Modern Languages and Linguistics for the Research Excellence Framework for England for REF 2014 and REF 2021. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Cortex, and on the editorial board of Historiographia Linguistica and Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. She serves on the executive board of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas and the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences, and is a founder member of the University Council of General and Applied Linguistics.

Qualifications

• BA, Washington University in St Louis
• PhD, Boston University

Administrative responsibilities

• Chair of the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Sub-Board of Examiners for Applied Linguistics and Communication
• Programme Director and Admissions Tutor, MA in Applied Linguistics and Communication
• Joint Programme Director and Admissions Tutor, Postgraduate Research in Applied Linguistics

Visiting posts

• Visiting Senior Research Fellowship 2015, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University, Providence, USA,
• Nat C. Robertson Distinguished Visiting Professor of Science and Society 2007, Emory University, Atlanta USA ,
• Barra Foundation International Research Fellowship in American History and Culture, 2022, Library Company of Philadelphia, USA,
• Senior Visiting Research Fellow 2022-2023, Special Collections and Archives, Loyola University Chicago, USA,

Honours and awards

• Silver Gilt Award, Embroidered Minds Epilepsy Garden, Chelsea Flower Show, Royal Horticultural Society, November 2018
• President, International Society for the History of the Neurosciences, February 2010

ORCID

0000-0001-8505-8815

Research

Research overview

Marjorie Lorch's main research interest is in understanding how language is organized in the brain through the investigation of neurogenic language and communication disorders, with a specific interest in cross-linguistic comparisons and bilingual speakers. She also carries out archival research in language and communication from a historical perspective focusing on the 19th-century history of ideas.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Centre for Multilingual and Multicultural Research
• Steering Committee Member, Queen Square Archives
• Advisory Council 2014-2019, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London

Research clusters and groups

• Interdisciplinary Member of Seminar and Advisory Steering Committee 2015-2020, ‘The values of French language and literature in the European Middle Ages’ ERC

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Overview

Marjorie Lorch supervises PhD students on a range topics focussing on aphasia, specific language impairment and other communication disorders including multilingual and cross-linguistics perspectives, in addition to historical research into 19th-century ideas about language organization in the brain, language development and language learning.

I am happy to consider enquiries from potential doctoral students on topics relating to

• acquired and developmental language, speech, voice and communication impairments in monolingual and multilingual speakers
• 19th century history of ideas about language and thought

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you would like an informal discussion about your ideas for an MPhil or PhD.

Current Postgraduate Research Students

Second Supervisor

Fung Yee Chun, Emotion Recognition and Emotional Acculturation of Culturally sensitive emotions among Chinese Multilinguals.

Malwina Gudowska, Multilingual Mothering: The (Re)Construction of the Mixed Emotions of Mothers Raising Multilingual Children.

Doctoral Alumni:

Principal Supervisor

Emina Tuzovic, L2 Visual Word Processing in L1 Arabic L2 English Learners –Beyond Vowel Blindness, 2023.

Ariadni Loutrari, Prosody beyond pitch and emotion in speech and music: evidence from right hemisphere brain damage and congenital amusia, 2016.

Keith Atkin, Comprehending the nonconventional nonsymbolic behaviours demonstrated by young children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD), 2013.

Jui-Hua Chen, Linguistic manifestations of aphasia in Taiwanese-Mandarin bilingual speakers, 2011.

Heather McDowell, The relationship between phonological awareness and alphabetical literacy, with reference to L1 Chinese users of L2 English, 2011.

Alan Bradley, Lexical acquisition in a bilingual setting, 2010.

Donia Fahim, Developmental language impairment in Egyptian Arabic, 2005.

Paula Hellal, Acquired childhood aphasia: Historical and theoretical perspectives, 2004.

Isabelle Barriere, On the Acquisition of French Argument Structure and SE-Cliticization: Explaining the L1 Acquisition of Reflexive, Reciprocal, Anticausative and Middle-Passive Constructions across Languages, 2004.

Second Supervisor:

Asma Al-Amer, Phonological acquisition and development in Arabic-English bilingual children, 2019.

Jennifer Watson, Intercultural learning and development among youth participants in the short term educational programmes of an international charity (CISV), 2014.

MPhil Alumni:

Principal Supervisor

Krystle Jalalian, Autism Spectrum Disorders and Bilingualism: the investigation of social communicative abilities and behaviours among bilingual and monolingual ASD and TD children aged 2-5 years, 2020.

 

Teaching

I teach the postgraduate core course Research Methods and Design and UG and PG option modules Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics. I provide supervision for BA final year projects and MA dissertations in these areas. I provide workshops for Postgraduate students pursuing Dissertations and Independent Literature Reviews.

In addition, I contribute to a number of team taught modules including: UG Doing Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics; UG Investigating Language; UG Final Year Project in Linguistics, UG Final Year Project in Intercultural Communication, PG Introduction to Applied Linguistics; PG Empirical Research Workshops, and PG Research Skills Workshops.

Teaching modules

• Doing Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics (ARLL004S4)
• Doing Languages, Cultures and Applied Linguistics (ARLL004S4)
• Dissertation (LNLN004D7)
• Dissertation (LNLN004D7)
• Research Methods and Design (LNLN019S7)
• Research Methods and Design (LNLN019S7)
• Linguistics Final Year Project (LNLN023S6)
• Introduction to Applied Linguistics (LNLN076S7)
• Introduction to Applied Linguistics (LNLN076S7)
• Independent Literature Review (SSAC012S7)
• Independent Literature Review (SSAC012S7)
• Neurolinguistics (level 5) (SSAC030H5)
• Psycholinguistics (level 5) (SSAC032H5)
• Empirical Research Skills Training Workshop (SSAC035Z7)
• Empirical Research Skills Training Workshop (SSAC035Z7)
• Neurolinguistics (level 7) (SSAC046S7)
• Psycholinguistics (level 7) (SSAC047S7)
• Postgraduate Research Seminars (SSAC059Z7)
• Postgraduate Research Seminars (SSAC059Z7)
• Investigating Language (SSAC060H5)

Publications

Business and community

Outreach

The Bloomsbury Festival 2020. https://bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/2020vision/

Academic Partner, Creative Development Lab, sponsored by an Arts Award from Arts Council England winter 2019-20.

I worked with a group of artists, community stakeholders and other academics selected from local universities to develop projects on the theme "Vision" for the 2020 Bloomsbury festival. This involved a series of intensive collaborative workshops over 6 months. I presented my research on the discovery of vocal cord movements as a source of voice by Bloomsbury clinicians and scientists who made the invisible visible.

I worked collaboratively and provided expert advice to Vicki Dela Amedume, creative director of Upswing contemporary circus company, Roger Hartley, director of the Bureau of Silly Ideas and Amelia Kosminsky, visual artist on the development of a number of projects for the festival and beyond.

Innovations in Language, Emotion, and Empathy Research: Celebrating the work of Vincent V. Herr, S.J. (1901-1970). 

http://libapps.luc.edu/digitalexhibits/s/herr-psychology/page/herr-home

I curated a digital exhibitions of based on my archival research on the work of  psychologist V.V. Herr, S.J. in collaboration with Kathy Young, Head Archivist of Special Collections, Loyola University Chicago, USA.

The Embroidered Minds Collaboration http://www.embroideredminds.co.uk/

Author Leslie Forbes†, artists Julia Dwyer†, Caroline Isgar, Sue Ridge and Andrew Thomas, historian Jan Marsh and clinicians Renata Whurr and Andrew Lees.

My research publications and expertise in aphasia and the history of neurology at Queen Square during the late 19th century helped to inform works of fiction, art, a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show 2018 partly sponsored by the Epilepsy Society and Young Epilepsy charities, and numerous public lectures at galleries and historical societies.

Families in British India Society FIBIS https://www.fibis.org/

I gave a public lecture in June 2018 demonstrating the techniques and strategies I used to uncover the biographical details of Thomas Prendergast (1806-1886) who lived and worked in India and subsequently developed an original method of language learning,