This page in Swedish

Cecilia Nakeva Von Mentzer

Cecilia Nakeva Von Mentzer Position: Senior Lecturer School/office: School of Health Sciences

Email: Y2VjaWxpYS5uYWtldmEtdm9ubWVudHplcjtvcnUuc2U=

Phone: +46 19 301272

Room: P2150

Cecilia Nakeva Von Mentzer
Research subject Research environments

About Cecilia Nakeva Von Mentzer

About Cecilia Nakeva von Mentzer

Cecilia Nakeva von Mentzer has been a Senior Lecturer in Audiology at Örebro University since April 2019. She holds a degree in Speech and Language Pathology from Karolinska Institutet (1991) and a PhD in Disability Science from Linköping University (2014). Previously, she worked as a university lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University.

Research

Cecilia’s research primarily focuses on the assessment and treatment of speech, language, and reading difficulties in children with and without hearing impairments. This includes the development of assessment tools for speech and language perception, as well as the design and evaluation of methods to support children’s speech, language, and reading abilities. More recently, her research has expanded to include social aspects of communicative disabilities. Her work is often interdisciplinary, involving collaboration with psychologists, audiologists, engineers, and special educators.

Cecilia leads the research project Language, Communication and Psychological Well-being in Young Adults with Hearing Loss: A Longitudinal Follow-up (SKOP).

She also heads a survey study titled Creating Space for Children – The Significance of the Physical Environment for Meetings and Conversations in Social Services: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, conducted in collaboration with researchers in social work and occupational therapy.

SKOP
The overarching aim of the SKOP project is to explore how young adulthood is experienced by individuals with hearing loss from a language and communication perspective, and how this relates to psychological well-being. The project follows up on a group of children who used cochlear implants (CI) or hearing aids (HA) more than ten years after participating in a reading-focused research project. The goal is to deepen understanding of young adults with hearing loss from a life-course perspective. A sub-study on listening ability in young adults was presented at the Nordic Conference in Speech and Language Pathology in November 2024.

Creating Space for Children
Children who encounter social services are often in vulnerable life situations. This project investigates how the physical environments where these meetings take place affect the child’s sense of safety, participation, and ability to express themselves. Through a survey targeting social workers, we map their experiences of meeting rooms—where conversations occur, how the rooms are designed, and how this is perceived to influence the relationship with the child. The results may lead to concrete changes in how social services’ facilities are planned and used, thereby strengthening children’s rights and well-being. The project is interdisciplinary, practice-oriented, and has the potential to influence both policy and everyday professional practice in social work.

Cecilia is a member of the research subject Disability Research, part of the research environment SpecUL – Special Education, Development and Learning, and leads the research group Speak up.

Teaching
Pedagogical Approach

Cecilia’s pedagogical approach is based on three key concepts: curiosity, evidence-based judgment, and relationship. This approach is rooted in her experiences as a pediatric speech-language pathologist in clinical practice from 1991 to 2009, where she had close contact with children and their significant adults. Several of the pedagogical development projects she undertook in clinical settings, as well as her therapeutic training, have shaped her work as a university educator.

She teaches students at all levels—from newcomers to higher education to those at the master’s and doctoral levels. Her students come from programs in audiology, occupational therapy, nursing, and special education. The diversity of student backgrounds requires her to actively understand their academic journey and future professional contexts. Overall, her teaching involves understanding where the student comes from and where they are headed.

A particular aspect of Cecilia’s teaching role at Örebro University is her background in speech-language pathology, which requires specific efforts to highlight speech-language interventions for various patient groups (e.g., developmental language disorder, voice disorders, and aphasia). To support this, she maintains ongoing dialogue with specialized speech-language pathologists in different fields.

Her teaching portfolio includes practical exercises in body awareness and voice, lectures, labs in acoustic phonetics and speech perception, children’s language, cognition, hearing and reading, and statistics, among other topics.

Cecilia teaches at the undergraduate level in the Audiology and Occupational Therapy programs, as well as in the Master’s program in Occupational Therapy/Audiology. She supervises theses at both undergraduate and advanced levels. In February 2024, Petter Kallioinen defended his dissertation, with Cecilia serving as assistant supervisor.

Research groups

Publications

Articles in journals |  Articles, reviews/surveys |  Chapters in books |  Conference papers |  Doctoral theses, comprehensive summaries |  Other | 

Articles in journals

Articles, reviews/surveys

Chapters in books

Conference papers

Doctoral theses, comprehensive summaries

Other