Professor Helen Breadmore

• Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic and Professional Practice, Learning and Development Centre, University of Warwick, 2014
• Ph.D. in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, 2008
• M.Res. in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, 2004
• B.Sc.(Hons) in Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, 2003

Dr Helen Breadmore joined the University of Birmingham as an Associate Professor Psychology in Education in 2021. Prior to joining UoB she was an Associate Professor (Research) at Coventry University (2014-2021), where she led two evidence reviews for the Education Endowment Foundation (Literacy Development: Evidence Review and A Systematic Review of Measures of Attainment in Literacy, Mathematics and Science), led several projects exploring the role of morphological knowledge in literacy development and was Co-Investigator of the delivery team for an Education Endowment Foundation randomised control trial of Peer Assisted Learning Strategies for Reading (PALS-UK). 

Dr Helen Breadmore completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Birmingham in 2008. Her thesis examined profoundly deaf children’s use of inflectional morphology in reading and spelling. She then continued to work in the School of Psychology first as a Research Associate and then as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2011) examining awareness of grammatical number marking during reading and studying eye-movement recording during reading. Her second postdoc was at the University of Warwick with Prof Julia Carroll (2012-2014) as Co-Investigator of a Nuffield Foundation Grant examining reading and spelling development of children with dyslexia and children with a history of repeated ear infections.

• BSc Psychology in Education.  Module Lead for LI Quantitative Research Methods in Psychology – Part 2 and LH Psychology in Education Research Project/Dissertation.

• Module support for LC Quantitative Research Methods in Psychology – Part 1, LI Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology – Part 2, LH Critical Approaches to Psychology in Education.

Dr Helen Breadmore is experienced in research student supervision in both psychology and education. She has examined a variety of research degree theses (e.g., PhD in Education, Doctorate in Applied Educational and Child Psychology). Please get in touch with her directly with proposals for postgraduate research projects or examination requests. She is keen to supervise and exam doctoral students with an interest in literacy and language development and evidence-based education broadly. Those with an interest in morphological processes, spelling and/or literacy difficulties are particularly encouraged. 

Previous postgraduate research students who have completed their studies:

• Parminder Khela, PhD. Understanding the impact of children’s exposure to digital texts
• Sara Whylie, PhD. Morphological development: From the beginner to the proficient reader
• Jodie Enderby. MScR. Prosody, phonology and morphology in reading and spelling.
• Katherine Hall, PhD.  Patterns of verbal and nonverbal memory and executive function predict language and literacy ability. 

Current postgraduate research students:

• Zhenyan Yin. PhD. Working title: The Role of Morphological Awareness and Cross-language Morphological Transfer in Bilingual Children with Dyslexia. Supervisory team: Dr Helen Breadmore and Dr Yaling Hsiao.
• Kathryn Cawley. PhD at Coventry University. Working title: Developing the effectiveness of spelling teaching in mainstream classrooms to improve outcomes for all learners. Supervisory team: Prof Julia Carroll (Coventry University), Dr Helen Breadmore and Dr Sarah Critten (Open University).

• Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Research in Reading
• Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society
• Office for National Statistics Accredited Researcher
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Voting Member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading
• Lead guest editor of Special Issue of the Journal of Research in Reading “Advances in understanding the role of morphemes in literacy development”
• Deputy Head of Department and Research Lead for Education and Social Justice.
• Lead of the School of Education Literacy Research Network
• Economic and Social Research Council Peer Review College
• Education Endowment Foundation Peer Review Panels