Elena Lieven did her undergraduate degree and her Ph.D. on individual differences in early language development in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. She came to Manchester in 1979. During her years at Manchester she developed close research links with members of the Department of Psychology in the University of California, Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen and spent parts of her sabbatical leaves in both places. She was Editor of the Journal of Child Language from 1996 - 2005. In 1998 Professor Lieven was granted long-term unpaid leave to work at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. This funded the Max Planck Child Study Centre  from 1998-2014 which was set up in the Manchester Department when she moved to Leipzig.  In 2012, she moved back to work in the Manchester School and, as well as continuing as Director of the Child Study Centre, took on the role of Centre lead in the newly formed Centre for Developmental Science and Disorders in the Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health.  In 2014, the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD) of which Elena is the Centre Director, was established across the Universities of Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster on a 5-year grant.

• Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig