Pooja Pandith

Pooja Pandith completed her post-graduation in speech-language pathology and currently works as a Research Associate at The Promise Foundation, Bangalore based in India. She has been an active research associate in TalkTogether—a research initiative funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and focused on the oral language development of young children.

One highlight of this involvement was leading a learning level survey assessment in Karnataka, where the team developed and used a battery of assessment materials to evaluate the language and emergent literacy skills of 5- and 6-year-old children. This effort involved approximately 3,000 assessment hours and 1,500 hours of data preparation, transcription, and coding—an achievement of which Pooja is particularly proud.

Additionally, Pooja has contributed to a story-based oral language intervention for children, examining the impact of repeated exposure to structured narratives and targeted syntactic structures on their language use across a diverse sample of multilingual children.

Pooja holds a specialized certification in research ethics for conducting research in low- and middle-income countries. Story reading with children is more than just research to her—it's a passion. She takes great joy in connecting with children on a personal level, seeing it as an opportunity to inspire and foster a love for learning.