Margaret Snowling - Biography#
Professor Snowling joined St. John’s College, Oxford in September 2012 as President until she stepped down in 2022. She is now an Honorary Professor in the Department of Experimental Psychology and Professorial Research Fellow, Australian Catholic University.
Her research focuses on children’s language and learning and she is specifically interested in the nature and causes of children’s reading difficulties and how best to ameliorate them. In recent years, her work has focused on longitudinal studies of children at high-risk of reading problems, and she has been involved in the implementation of randomised controlled trials assessing the efficacy of reading and language interventions.
Previously, she was Professor of Psychology at the University of York and co-directed the Centre for Reading and Language, which was focused on understanding the causes of children’s learning difficulties and developing interventions to ameliorate them. A primary focus of the Centre is dyslexia and the impact of oral language difficulties on educational attainments.
She completed her first degree in Psychology at Bristol and her doctorate at University College London under the supervision of the eminent psychologist, Uta Frith. Later she qualified as a clinical psychologist.
She is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She holds honorary doctorates from Goldsmiths London (2010), University College London (2014), Warwick University (2016) and University of Bristol (2019) for contributions to the science of reading and dyslexia and was appointed CBE for services to science and the understanding of dyslexia in 2016. She is a Past-President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading and was one of the Joint Editors of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. She served as a member of Sir Jim Rose’s Expert Advisory Group on provision for Dyslexia in 2009 and as an expert member of the Education for All: Fast Track Initiative group in Washington DC in 2011.
