Dr Georgia Niolaki BA, MA, PhD, SFHEA, AMBDA, AMBDA FE/HE, APC

Sep 2015 – Aug 2016 University of Birmingham PgCert Language Literacies and Dyslexia, AMBDA primary and FE/HE and APC, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom

Sep 2014 – Mar 2015 Coventry University PgCert, Teaching in HE Coventry, England, United Kingdom

Jan 2010 – Feb 2014 University College London PhD, Cognitive Psychology and Psycholinguistics London, England, United Kingdom

Oct 2007 – Nov 2009 University College London, MA Literacy Learning and Literacy Difficulties London, United Kingdom

Sep 1994 – Jul 1998 University of Thrace, BA (Hons) Primary Education, Greece

Georgia Niolaki began her career working with children in primary education, specialising in assessing and supporting children with special needs. Since 2011, she has been teaching in Higher Education and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Her research has been widely recognised, with numerous publications in national and international journals. She has also presented her work at leading conferences. As the Principal Investigator on educational and literacy research projects, she has secured funding from prestigious organisations such as the Early Career Researcher Funding Scheme - Pump-prime Funding (Coventry University), BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants, The British Academy, HEQR Seed Funding (Bath Spa University 2021-2024), UKRI, and Seed Corn Funding (University of Birmingham 2025).

Georgia Niolaki is the Principal Investigator of the Spelling Profile Assessment, a new spelling test designed for primary school children in the UK. The BBC has featured her work with learners and teachers of students with dyslexia. This involved cocreated, bespoke interventions for learners with dyslexia.

She is also a member of the advisory team for the GRADIENCE project, led by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.Th.). This project aims to enhance our understanding of how aspects of speakers’ grammars—particularly those influenced by extra-grammatical factors—can be computationally modelled.

Geogia Niolaki has played a key role in the development of HelexKids (Terzopoulos, Duncan, Wilson, Niolaki, & Masterson, 2016), a word frequency database based on Greek and Cypriot schoolbooks from first to sixth grade. This database serves as a valuable resource for psycholinguistic research and educational practitioners seeking insights into language learning.

Additionally, Georgia has co-developed with Dr Aris Terzopoulos the Bilex kids, the first bilingual database for children learning Greek as a second language. The database can be used freely by teachers and researchers based in English-speaking countries where learners study Greek as a second/additional language.

Georgia’s mission is to support individuals struggling with literacy and to contribute to creating a more inclusive world for everyone.

Georgia has taught on the following modules, which are part of the Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties course:

• Intervention and curriculum management for Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD)/Dyslexia
• Understanding Literacy Difficulties
• Discussing Dyslexia
• Identification and assessment of Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD)/Dyslexia

Supervision of students on the MA Inclusion

Dyslexia, reading and spelling development and difficulties

Social/emotional challenges and dyslexia across the lifespan

Bilingualism
Inclusion

Reading and spelling intervention programmes and support (co-created with learners and teachers)

Longitudinal studies

Ongoing Project: Literacy and cognitive predictors of spelling with children learning English as a second language; Collaborators: Dr. Heike Mlakar, University of Hildesheim, Germany; Dr. Joanna Hirst-Plein, University of Hildesheim, Germany; Dr Terzopoulos BCU, UK (in prep)

Ongoing Project: Modelling the limits of Grammar: Integrating lexical frequency in a Gradient Harmonic model of lexical stress; Evidence from young and adult Greek speaker’s grammar, In collaboration with Professor Anthi Revithiadou, Department of Linguistics, School of Philology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. (consultancy)

Completed: University of Birmingham Seedcorn funding to spark excellence in understanding and supporting dyslexia and what it means for schools, parents, and individuals. £500

Completed: Bath Spa University HEQR Seed Funding For the payment of 1 Research assistant (PG) to collect data on spelling from Primary age children (UK primary schools) and for the development of a Morph_test with Dr Saskia Kohnen from Macquarie University 300 children:£ 1,740.

Completed: Bath Spa University HEQR Seed Funding for Combatting feelings of helplessness; bespoke interventions for children and young individuals with dyslexia. A knowledge exchange project in collaboration with local schools the Gloucestershire Dyslexia Association and Dr Aris Terzopoulos from Birmingham City University. £ 16,098.59

Completed: Bath Spa University HEQR Seed Funding for marking support to write a paper on spelling development:£ 359.4.

Completed: Bath Spa University HEQR Seed Funding for the payment of one research assistant (PG) to collect data on spelling from primary-age children (UK primary schools) and for the development of a Morph_test with Dr. Saskia Kohnen from Macquarie University: £ 2,492.80 for 100 children.

Completed: Bath Spa University KE Dialogues Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Accelerator award; a collaboration on raising dyslexia awareness in schools with the Gloucestershire Dyslexia Association and Birmingham City University: £1,905.86