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Marion Leaman, Ph.D., CCC-SLP

Portrait of Marion Leaman
Assistant Professor, Hearing and Speech
mleaman@kumc.edu

Professional Background

Marion Leaman, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is an assistant professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech at KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. She is also director of the Aphasia Language, Learning, Communication and Conversation (ALL-CAN-Converse) Laboratory. She conducts research focused on aphasia intervention to improve real-world, everyday conversation for people with aphasia and their families.

Before returning to school in 2015 for her doctorate degree, Leaman practiced as a speech-language pathologist specializing in aphasia for more than 20 years. She joined the KU faculty in July 2020.

Leaman was recognized as a 2021 Tavistock Trust for Aphasia Distinguished Scholar. Supported by The Tavistock Trust for Aphasia, United Kingdom, this honor recognizes her academic excellence in research and student mentoring dedicated to improving the lives of people living with aphasia, their families and caregivers.

She also received the Language Editor’s Award from the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research for authoring what the journal deems the most impactful work meeting the highest quality standards in research design and presentation.


Research

Overview

Leaman's primary research interest is in developing interventions with outcomes that generalize to everyday conversation needs for people with aphasia .

She is currently investigating mechanisms in social conversations that provide spontaneous opportunities for complex and personally meaningful communication by the person with aphasia. Concurrently, she is piloting an intervention in which clinicians embed these mechanisms as therapeutic techniques in conversation to drive change in language and communication.