Elena Lieven (born 18 August 1947) is a British psychology and linguistics researcher and educator. She was a senior research scientist in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. She is also a professor in the School of Health Sciences at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

where she is director of its Child Study Centre and leads the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD). Lieven was named "Researcher of the Year" by the University of Manchester in 2015. She was elected Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

(FBA) in 2018.

Early life and education

Elena Lieven is the sister of

Anatol Lieven Anatol Lieven (born 28 June 1960) is a British author, journalist, and policy analyst. He is currently a visiting professor at King's College London and senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Background Peter ...

Dominic Lieven Dominic Lieven (born 19 January 1952) is an English research professor at Cambridge University (Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College) and a Fellow of the British Academy and of Trinity College, Cambridge. Education Lieven was educated at ...

, Michael Lieven, and Nathalie Lieven. Ancestors include Dorothea von Lieven and Christoph von Lieven, prominent members of Baltic German nobility. Lieven attended

More House School More House School, Frensham is an Private schools in the United Kingdom, independent Special education in the United Kingdom, specialist school located in Surrey. It educates boys aged 8–19 who have Learning disability, learning disabilities. ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, graduating in 1963, then studying at

City of Westminster College City of Westminster College is a further education college in the City of Westminster, Greater London, England, founded originally as Paddington Technical Institute in 1904 and gaining its current name in 1990. The college has two centres in cent ...

in London. She studied

experimental psychology Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, anim ...

during her undergraduate years at

New Hall, Cambridge New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 ** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995 * "New" (Daya song), 2017 * "New" (No Doubt song), 1 ...

, earning honors, and then studied language development during her doctoral studies at Cambridge.

Career

After Cambridge, Lieven moved to the University of Manchester. She was Editor of the ''Journal of Child Language'' for nearly ten years (1996–2005). Her principal areas of research involve: usage-based approaches to language development; the emergence and construction of grammar; the relationship between input characteristics and the process of language development; and variation in children's communicative environments. She has been involved in the design and collection of naturalistic child language corpora initially funded by the

Economic and Social Research Council The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), formerly the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). UKRI is a non-departmental public body (NDPB) funded by the UK government. ESRC provides fundi ...

(ESRC) and, more recently, has collected a number of

dense Density (volumetric mass density or specific mass) is the ratio of a substance's mass to its volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' (or ''d'') can also be use ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

s funded by the Max Planck Institute. Lieven was previously the president of the

International Association for the Study of Child Language The International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL) is an academic society for first language acquisition researchers. IASCL was founded in 1970 by a group of prominent language acquisition researchers to promote international a ...

. Also, she is a member of The Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, a DOBES project funded by the

Volkswagen Foundation The Volkswagen Foundation (German: ''VolkswagenStiftung'') is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research. It is not affiliated to the present company, the Volkswagen Group. It wa ...

aiming at the linguistic and ethnographic description of two endangered

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

. She has also been the director of the Child Study Centre; Centre lead for the Centre for Developmental Science and Disorders in the Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health; director of the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD) which was established jointly by the University of Manchester,

University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

and

University of Lancaster Lancaster University (officially The University of Lancaster) is a collegiate public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several new univer ...

in 2014 on a five-year grant. She has been designated an honorary professor at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

, and she has been a guest researcher at numerous universities, including the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics,

Nijmegen Nijmegen ( , ; Nijmeegs: ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and the ninth largest of the Netherlands as a whole. Located on the Waal River close to the German border, Nijmegen is one of the oldest cities in the ...

, the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

;

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona (official name in ; UB), formerly also known as Central University of Barcelona (), is a public research university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was established in 1450. With 76,000 students, ...

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, US; and

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora. The university was established in 1 ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

, Australia.

References

External links

Profile
at

Max Planck Institute The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

for

Evolutionary Anthropology Evolutionary anthropology, the interdisciplinary study of the human evolution, evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and of the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates, builds on natural science and on social science. Vari ...

Profile
at

, School of Psychological Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Lieven, Elena British cognitive scientists Women cognitive scientists Developmental psycholinguists 1947 births Academics of the University of Manchester Lieven family Russian people of German descent Living people Alumni of New Hall, Cambridge Fellows of the British Academy Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology