Team & partners
TGfL has been developed by academics and speech and language therapists with extensive experience working with people with aphasia. Cristina Romani and Louise Lander have been joint principal investigators in developing TGfL and demonstrating its benefits. Andrew Olson has been involved with the project from the start, contributing to both the design and implementation. Stephen Cullum joined the research team in 2025 as a software engineering consultant.
The English games have been adapted to Italian by Costanza Papagno (University of Trento, CIMeC) and Francesca Blaisol and Alessandra Tobaldi (Neurocognitive Rehabilitation Centre – CeRiN, Rovereto), based on initial adaptation work by Raffaele Nappo (Centro di Riabilitazione Neapolisanit, Napoli).
The digital versions of the games have been developed by Design Factory at Aston University. All copyright is held by Aston University.
Core team
Louise Lander
Louise qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in 2007 and has worked in the NHS with adults with aphasia since then. She observed early in her career that many clients were keen for more therapy than services could provide. This motivated her to pursue a Masters in Health Research at the University of Birmingham in 2016, which began her collaboration with Cristina and Andrew to build evidence for a new group-based gamified aphasia therapy. The intensive social therapy approach has produced strong language outcomes and is now expanding into digital formats.
Cristina Romani
Cristina has nearly 40 years of experience in the assessment, diagnosis, and rehabilitation of cognitive impairments. Her research focuses on language processing from both theoretical and clinical perspectives. She studies how language works, how it can be damaged, and how language recovery can be supported. She has published widely in high-impact journals and has an international reputation in research on developmental dyslexia and aphasia.
Andrew Olson
Andrew is an expert in neuropsychology and the assessment of cognitive deficits. His work includes statistical modelling of language impairments and advanced data analysis in neurological conditions. He has published more than 55 peer-reviewed articles and has contributed to research on aphasia, neurodegenerative diseases, and neural network modelling in cognitive neuroscience.
Stephen Cullum
Stephen joined the research team in 2025 as a software engineering consultant, supporting the development of the digital versions of the TGfL games.
Collaborations
We would be delighted to hear from you for any comments and would be very interested in potential collaborations.
Please contact Cristina (C.Romani@Aston.ac.uk) or Louise (louise.lander@nhs.net).