Vicky Hulks

My background is in speech and language therapy and I have specialised in supporting children’s development in the early years- working with parents and practitioners and within wider community teams. I have considerable experience relating to interventions that focus on adult-child interactions. I am also a mum of two, and support my neurodivergent son (11 years old with ADHD, and undiagnosed other bits and bobs) and have personal as well as professional interest in developing research that is responsive to the views and experiences of neurodivergent children, parents and families.

My DPhil will be researching how we can use process evaluation when measuring the impact of complex early years interventions. By considering a range of contextual factors within the evaluation process, an intervention can better demonstrate if it works, who it works for, how, and why. I am currently in my first year of my DPhil under the supervision of Dr Alex Hendry and Professor Gaia Scerif working on a project which aims to support toddlers with a family connection to autism or ADHD to develop strong attention, regulation and thinking skills (START).  

My DPhil is funded by an ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) Collaborative Studentship.

Prior to this DPhil, I worked as a research assistant with Dr Cathy Manning, investigating the visual processing skills of children with/without dyslexia and I have worked on a number of projects relating to children’s language development.