معرفی
Dr. Tessel Boerma is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, and a researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht. Her work focuses on language development in challenging contexts, including environmental factors and congenital conditions like 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, with a strong emphasis on clinical linguistics and early childhood development.
- Investigated language and cognitive development in monolingual/multilingual children with/without developmental language disorders (DLD).
- Developed and implemented the online test battery LITMUS-NL for diagnosing DLD in multilingual children.
- Explores the interplay between language skills, cognitive development, and mental health in adolescents with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
Her research bridges linguistics, psychology, and medical sciences, often in interdisciplinary collaborations under the Dynamics of Youth (DoY) initiative. She supervises PhD projects and contributes to improving clinical diagnostic tools for language disorders.
Scientific Awards:
- VENI-grant from NWO (project: language ability in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and mental health).
- Open Competition-XS grant from NWO (project: language skills in preterm children).
- Anéla-AVT Dissertation Prize (for her PhD thesis on multilingual DLD).
Boerma lectures on clinical linguistics, language and cognition, and multilingual development, while organizing conferences like TaalStaal and BiSLI to advance research in bilingual language disorders.
