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 German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

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

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

where she is Director of its Child Study Centre and leads the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD).

Early life and education

Elena Lieven is the sister of

Anatol Lieven Anatol Lieven is a British author, journalist, and policy analyst best known for his expertise on the Taliban of Afghanistan. He is currently a visiting professor at King's College London and senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Respons ...

Dominic Lieven Dominic Lieven (born 19 January 1952) is a 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 Downside Sc ...

, Michael Lieven, and

Nathalie Lieven Dame Nathalie Marie Daniella Lieven , (born 20 May 1964), known as Mrs Justice Lieven, is a Justice of the High Court of England and Wales assigned to the Family Division. Practising law since 1989, in her career a barrister Lieven speciali ...

. Ancestors include

Dorothea von Lieven Princess Katharina Alexandra Dorothea von Lieven (russian: Дарья Христофоровна Ливен, tr. ), née Freiin von Benckendorff, 17 December 1785 – 27 January 1857), was a Baltic German noblewoman and the wife of Prin ...

and

Christoph von Lieven Prince Christoph Heinrich von Lieven (russian: Христофор Андреевич Ливен, Khristofor Andreyevich Liven; 6 May 1774 – 10 January 1839) was a Baltic German nobleman, Russian general, ambassador to London in 1812–1834, and ...

, prominent members of Baltic German nobility. Lieven attended More House School in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, graduating in 1963, then studying at

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

in London. She studied

experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...

during her undergraduate years at New Hall,

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, 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 substance's mass per unit of volume. The symbol most often used for density is ''ρ'' (the lower case Greek letter rho), although the Latin letter ''D'' can also be used. Mathematically ...

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

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 cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

. 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 , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

and

University of Lancaster , mottoeng = Truth lies open to all , established = , endowment = £13.9 million , budget = £317.9 million , type = Public , city = Bailrigg, City of Lancaster , country = England , coor = , campus = Bailrigg , faculty = ...

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

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), 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 Decemb ...

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

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

;

University of Barcelona The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, US; and

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora. The university was established in 1964, becoming the third university in the state of Victoria an ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

, Australia. In July 2018 Lieven was elected Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy 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 same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

(FBA).

References

External links

Profile
at

Max Planck Institute Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE) * Max (gorilla) (1 ...

for

Evolutionary Anthropology Evolutionary anthropology, the interdisciplinary study of the 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. Various fields and ...

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