PPI
Co-design with the community
Adolescents who stammer, caregivers, clinicians, and community representatives shape the assessment tools from the outset, so they are realistic, respectful, and usable.
Current research
Data collection
UCL · Experimental Psychology
Transforming stuttering assessment through PPI and VR
A three-year Dominic Barker Trust programme at University College London, co-designing immersive, ecologically valid assessment with people who stammer, families, and clinicians, not for them.
3 years
Competitive external grant (Mar 2026 to Mar 2029)
8
Interdisciplinary team members at UCL
PPI-led
Patient & public involvement from design to delivery
Live
Project in active data collection
Why it matters
Assessment that reflects real life
Stammering shapes how people speak, learn, and connect. Too often, assessment still relies on questionnaires or clinic tasks that miss the pressure of school, friendships, and everyday conversation.
This project asks a direct question: can assessments built with the stammering community, using Virtual Reality, capture what matters more faithfully than researcher-led tools alone? VR lets us recreate real-world-like scenarios safely while measuring speech, attention, phonological working memory, and engagement in settings that feel real.
The work sits at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, immersive technology, and person-centred digital health, with the long-term aim of better support for people who stammer and their families, and evidence that can translate into clinical practice.
The programme is among the first systematic comparisons of PPI co-designed VR assessments with conventional approaches, addressing gaps in ecological validity, diagnostic accuracy, and meaningful patient engagement.
Approach
What we are building
Immersive paradigms, multimodal measurement, and community voice at every stage.
VR
Ecologically valid scenarios
Immersive tasks recreate real-world-like scenarios while integrating behavioural, attentional, speech, and phonological working memory measures.
Science
Rigorous comparison
Structured evaluation of PPI-led VR assessment against conventional researcher-led approaches, focusing on validity, accuracy, and engagement.
Impact
Translation-ready tools
Findings aim toward scalable, clinically meaningful technologies that improve how stammering is understood and supported in the UK and beyond.
Funding & leadership
Grant holder and team
Dr. Fjorda Kazazi is Lead Researcher, Grant Holder, and Project Team Leader for this Dominic Barker Trust award at UCL’s Department of Experimental Psychology, working with Prof. Peter Howell and an interdisciplinary team of eight members.
She leads research strategy, stakeholder engagement, methodological development, and delivery of the VR-based neurocognitive framework, while the project is now in its data collection phase, gathering speech, attention, and working memory data to evaluate diagnostic accuracy and user engagement.
Funding: Dominic Barker Trust, Transforming Stuttering Assessment through Patient and Public Involvement (PPI): A Novel Approach Using VR (competitive three-year research grant). Learn more about the Trust’s mission to fund stammering research and reduce stigma at dominicbarkertrust.org.uk.
The Dominic Barker Trust
Research in memory of Dominic Barker
Dom’s Fund was established in 1997 in remembrance of Dominic Barker, who lived with a persistent stammer and died in 1994 aged 26. The Trust funds research into the origins and treatment of stammering, supports speech and language therapy practice, and backs efforts to reduce stigma and misunderstanding around stuttering.
Related work & collaboration
Explore published research on stuttering, ADHD, VR attention paradigms, and digital interventions, or get in touch about PPI, immersive assessment, or academic partnership.