Dr Niamh Devane
Contact details
About
Overview
Niamh is a speech and language therapist and post-doctoral research fellow specialising in aphasia. Niamh worked clinically for seven years, predominantly in stroke rehabilitation but with time in paediatrics, special needs and acute adult services.
Niamh joined City, University of London in October 2012 as a researcher in the EVA team under Professor Jane Marshall. Niamh has been managing research projects from the development of the EVA Park technology (2012) to the first functional communication intervention trial in EVA Park (2013-2015) to the EVA Park single case studies (2016) and the virtual aphasia groups project which spanned four geographical areas (2017-1019). Niamh secured a doctoral studentship from the School of Health Sciences at City, University of London in December 2018 to investigate aphasia therapy in EVA Park from October 2019 - 2022 supervised by Professor Katerina Hilari, Professor Jane Marshall and Professor Stephanie Wilson (HCID).
Niamh is now a post-doctoral research fellow on the Barts Charity funded Machine Analyisis and Reporting of Spoken personal stories with aphasia (MARS) research project led by Professor Lucy Dipper (2024-2027), Face-to-face And Telehealth Equivalence in Aphasia (FATE-A) research project, led by Professor Katerina Hilari (2023-2025), the EPSRC funded Dara Project exploring inclusive data visualization for human-centred decision-making in people with communication disability (adults with aphasia and developmental language disorder) led by Professor Stephanie Wilson (2023-2026), and NIHR funded Emotional and Language recovery in Aphasia (ELA): a feasibility study developing a novel intervention for people living with post-stroke aphasia, led by Sarah Northcott (2025-2027).
Qualifications
- PhD, City, University of London, United Kingdom, October 2019 - December 2022
- BSc (Hons) Speech and Language Therapy, City, University of London, United Kingdom, September 2001 - July 2005
Memberships of professional organisations
- Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
- Health and Care Professions Council
Research
Research Overview
Research Areas
Aphasia
Publications
Publications by category
Conference papers and proceedings (5)
- Devane, N., Meckled-Szembek, C., Behn, N., Bohan, J., Comer, A., Roper, A.... Hilari, K. Face to Face and Telehealth Equivalence of Assessments in Aphasia (FATE-A study): Fidelity of Online Assessments. .
- Roper, A., Wilson, S., Devane, N., Talbot, R., Caute, A., Cruice, M.... Marshall, J. Connection and Cohesion in a Co-Designed Virtual World: Experience of Online Aphasia Groups. .doi:10.1007/978-3-031-84681-6_14
- Northcott, S., Devane, N., Behn, N., Nassor, J., Nazim, I., Omar, A.... Hilari, K. (2024). Emotional And Language Recovery For People With Aphasia (Ela): Co-Designing A Novel Intervention. 19th UK Stroke Forum Conference 3-5 December, Liverpool, UK.doi:10.1177/17474930241300284
- Comer, A., Behn, N., Northcott, S., Roper, A., Devane, N., Bohan, J.... Hilari, K. Developing A Telehealth Assessment Toolkit For Speech And Language Therapists Using The Com-B And Tdf Models For Behaviour Change. .
- 19th UK Stroke Forum Conference, 3 - 5 December 2024, Liverpool, UK. .doi:10.1177/17474930241300284
Journal articles (23)
- Northcott, S., Comer, A., Devane, N., Behn, N., Roper, A., Bohan, J.... Hilari, K. (2026). How do clinicians and people with aphasia experience telehealth assessment? A synthesis of four data sources from the FATE-A study. Aphasiology pp. 1-22. doi:10.1080/02687038.2026.2663794
- Northcott, S., Devane, N., Behn, N., Thomas, S., Morris, A., Sockett, L.... Hilari, K. (2026). EmotionaL and Language recovery in Aphasia (ELLA): co-designing and proof-of-concept testing a novel intervention. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology
- Wood, J., Devane, N., Roper, A., Botting, N., Cruice, M., Octaviani, U.... Wilson, S. (2026). Experiencing Data Visualization With Language Disability. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 46(2), pp. 20-29. doi:10.1109/mcg.2025.3642747
- van de Venter, R., Parish, C., Potts, B., Stogiannos, N., Ukaji, N., Simcock, C.... Malamateniou, C. (2026). Person-centred care education in practice: Students’ and academics’ evaluation of a postgraduate radiography module. Journal of Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, 57(2), pp. 102183-102183. doi:10.1016/j.jmir.2025.102183
- Devane, N., Marshall, J., Wilson, S. and Hilari, K. (2025). Developing a new aphasia therapy for a virtual world: the Virtual Elaborated Semantic Features Analysis (VESFA) intervention. Disability and Rehabilitation, 47(22), pp. 5839-5851. doi:10.1080/09638288.2025.2470401
- (2025). Correction. Disability and Rehabilitation, 47(22). doi:10.1080/09638288.2025.2523212
- Devane, N., Mazzoleni, S., Behn, N., Marshall, J., Wilson, S. and Hilari, K. (2025). Treatment Fidelity in a Feasibility Trial of the Aphasia Intervention, Virtual Elaborated Semantic Feature Analysis. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 60(3). doi:10.1111/1460-6984.70054
- Ramachandran, A., Hilari, K., Epstein, R., Devane, N. and Hirani, S.P. (2025). Voice Related Coping in Professional Voice Users-A Systematic Review. Journal of Voice, 39(2), pp. 562.e17-562.e31. doi:10.1016/j.jvoice.2022.08.024
- Comer, A., Northcott, S., Behn, N., Roper, A., Devane, N. and Hilari, K. (2025). Experiences and perspectives of UK speech and language therapists on telehealth assessment with people living with post‐stroke aphasia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 60(2). doi:10.1111/1460-6984.70018
- Devane, N., Botting, N., Cruice, M., Roper, A., Szafir, D., Wood, J.... Wilson, S. (2024). Data visualization and decision making in adults with acquired and developmental language disabilities: A scoping review. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 59(6), pp. 2617-2631. doi:10.1111/1460-6984.13105
- Devane, N., Buxton, S., Fox, C., Marshall, J., Staunton, D., Whiddett, J.... Hilari, K. (2024). What Conversation Topics are Meaningful to People with Aphasia? A qualitative study. Aphasiology, 38(9), pp. 1550-1567. doi:10.1080/02687038.2024.2319364
- Marshall, J., Devane, N., Berraondo, J., Talbot, R., Temponera, P., Clegg, K.... Wilson, S. (2024). Delivering Script Therapy for people with aphasia in EVA Park: Two single case treatment studies. Advances in Communication and Swallowing, 27(1), pp. 29-40. doi:10.3233/acs-220014
- Dipper, L., Devane, N., Barnard, R., Botting, N., Boyle, M., Cockayne, L.... Cruice, M. (2024). A feasibility randomised waitlist-controlled trial of a personalised multi-level language treatment for people with aphasia: The remote LUNA study. PLOS ONE, 19(6), pp. e0304385-e0304385. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0304385
- Devane, N., Behn, N., Marshall, J., Ramachandran, A., Wilson, S. and Hilari, K. (2023). The use of virtual reality in the rehabilitation of aphasia: a systematic review. Disability and Rehabilitation, 45(23), pp. 3803-3822. doi:10.1080/09638288.2022.2138573
- Caute, A., Cruice, M., Devane, N., Patel, A., Roper, A., Talbot, R.... Marshall, J. (2022). Delivering group support for people with aphasia in a virtual world: experiences of service providers. Disability and Rehabilitation, 44(26), pp. 8264-8282. doi:10.1080/09638288.2021.2011436
- Carragher, M., Steel, G., Talbot, R., Devane, N., Rose, M.L. and Marshall, J. (2021). Adapting therapy for a new world: storytelling therapy in EVA Park. Aphasiology, 35(5), pp. 704-729. doi:10.1080/02687038.2020.1812249
- Marshall, J., Devane, N., Talbot, R., Caute, A., Cruice, M., Hilari, K.... Wilson, S. (2020). A randomised trial of social support group intervention for people with aphasia: A Novel application of virtual reality. PLOS ONE, 15(9), pp. e0239715-e0239715. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239715
- Marshall, J., Devane, N., Edmonds, L., Talbot, R., Wilson, S., Woolf, C.... Zwart, N. (2018). Delivering word retrieval therapies for people with aphasia in a virtual communication environment. Aphasiology, 32(9), pp. 1054-1074. doi:10.1080/02687038.2018.1488237
- Carragher, M., Talbot, R., Devane, N., Rose, M. and Marshall, J. (2018). Delivering storytelling intervention in the virtual world of EVA Park. Aphasiology, 32(sup1), pp. 37-39. doi:10.1080/02687038.2018.1484880
- Amaya, A., Woolf, C., Devane, N., Galliers, J., Talbot, R., Wilson, S.... Marshall, J. (2018). Receiving aphasia intervention in a virtual environment: the participants’ perspective. Aphasiology, 32(5), pp. 538-558. doi:10.1080/02687038.2018.1431831
- Galliers, J., Wilson, S., Marshall, J., Talbot, R., Devane, N., Booth, T.... Greenwood, H. (2017). Experiencing EVA Park, a Multi-User Virtual World for People with Aphasia. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, 10(4), pp. 1-24. doi:10.1145/3134227
- Marshall, J., Booth, T., Devane, N., Galliers, J., Greenwood, H., Hilari, K.... Woolf, C. (2016). Evaluating the Benefits of Aphasia Intervention Delivered in Virtual Reality: Results of a Quasi-Randomised Study. PLOS ONE, 11(8), pp. e0160381-e0160381. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0160381
- Wilson, S., Roper, A., Marshall, J., Galliers, J., Devane, N., Booth, T.... Woolf, C. (2015). Codesign for people with aphasia through tangible design languages. CoDesign, 11(1), pp. 21-34. doi:10.1080/15710882.2014.997744