Heleen Leysen

Heleen Leysen serves as a lecturer-researcher at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences within the People and Well-being Research Group since 2014. A biologist and certified speech therapist holding a PhD, she specializes in language development disorders among multilingual children and coordinates the institution's multilingualism postgraduate programme in Speech Therapy and Audiology.

Her research focuses on:

• Assessment and intervention methodologies for communicative, cognitive, and developmental challenges
• Cross-linguistic language disorder diagnostics
• Educational strategies for multilingual clinical populations

She actively contributes to the "Assessment and intervention" research line addressing participation barriers for children and adults with communication impairments. Her work bridges clinical practice and academic research within speech-language pathology, emphasizing culturally responsive therapeutic approaches for linguistically diverse communities.