BA (Hons) Potsdam University, PhD Macquarie University

Saskia is a cognitive scientist and has an overseas degree in Linguistics and Speech-Language Pathology. After completing her PhD, she became one of our MULTILIT instructors in Coen, Cape York. Saskia joined the MULTILIT Research Unit in July 2009 and holds a joint appointment as a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science (MACCS), within the Institute of Human Cognition and Brain Science at Macquarie University. Saskia has received a number of research honours, including the 2009 LDA Tertiary Student Award for her PhD. The online testing interface (motif.com.au) that includes two assessment tools based on her research was highly commended at the 2009 Macquarie University Innovation Awards. In 2008, she was highly commended for an exceptional research study in the area of learning difficulties by Learning Difficulties Australia. Saskia's research interests include developmental reading and spelling difficulties; the evaluation of literacy interventions; cognitive neuropsychology of reading and spelling; single case intervention methodology and educational outcomes for Indigenous students.

Jennifer Buckingham is undertaking a PhD research project on literacy and social disadvantage. She will be testing the new small group MINILIT and MULTILIT programs with low progress readers in the primary school setting. For the last decade, Jennifer has been working as a policy researcher at the Centre for Independent Studies specialising in school education, and also spent a year as the schools editor at The Australian newspaper. Her supervisors are Professor Kevin Wheldall and Dr Robyn Beaman.