Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology, has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Newcastle University, in recognition for her internationally renowned work on specific language impairment in a degree ceremony on July 10th. She was nominated by the Speech and Language Sciences section, where Professor Bishop worked in the early 1980’s, and by the School of Psychology.

Spending the day at the University, she visited the Speech and Language Sciences Section giving an open lecture on the subject of “Why do some children find it hard to learn to talk?” Seen here, at the talk, in front of her slide about the campaign “Raising Awareness of Language Learning Impairments”, she spoke to an audience that included representatives from across the University, local speech and language therapists, parents and young people. She then went on to visit the University’s Institute of Neurology. In her speech to congregation Professor Vicki Bruce, Head of the School of Psychology, spoke of Professor Bishop’s contribution not only to the academic world but also for her support for women in science, for her blog and other forms of social media taking on all-comers in the field, for her Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation and, finally, for her authorship of three novels featuring the Freemantle based detective intrepid sixty-something amateur sleuth, Rose Absalom.