Dr Ben Rutter

Biography

I hold a BA in linguistics from the University of York, UK and a PhD in clinical linguistics and phonetics from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA. Between 2008–2010 I worked as an Assistant Professor (UK Lecturer) at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Centre before joining the Department of Human Communication Sciences of the University of Sheffield in September 2010.

I am a phonetician with an interest in the analysis of phonetic variation in both typical and disordered speech. My doctoral research involved the acoustic analysis of dysarthria secondary to multiple sclerosis and I have since published in the areas of sociophonetics, child language acquisition and motor speech disorders.

At present I am the Course Director of the BSc in Speech and Language Sciences here at Sheffield and teach on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules in phonetics, syntax, and motor speech disorders. I have a particular interest in widening participation in higher education and am involved in a number of outreach activities.