Ashleigh Reade is an Assistant Professor of Voice and Speech at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, where she teaches speech, accents, and vocal extremes. She is a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, a certified Vocal Combat Technique Trainer, and is pursuing a certificate in Vocology from NYU Steinhardt as well as a graduate certificate in Linguistics with BU Metropolitan College.
Coaching credits include The Huntington, Berkeley Rep, Trinity Rep, Boston Playwrights Theater, Actors Shakespeare Project, and Boston Lyric Opera. Ashleigh is a mentor in VASTA’s inaugural mentorship program and created a course at BU in Advanced Voice and Speech, designed to train future coaches and teachers in the field. She is the focus group representative for VASTA @ ATHE and is a frequent presenter at academic conferences. Her research sits at the intersection of voice science and artistry, considering how the subjectivity around voice and actor training can instead be measurably objective, repeatable, sustainable, and actor-centered. MFA Harvard/MXAT (Voice Pedagogy), BFA Boston Conservatory (Musical Theater).
Upcoming Short Courses
Tuesday 24th November 2026
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
The Lemma Dilemma: Teaching Voice and Speech through a Linguistic Lens!
Ashleigh Reade
For voice and speech teachers, the importance of “the thought” is almost a given. Text comes to life when it is fueled by an external stimulus; we breathe in response to an image, a concept, a need we wish to express, then transmit that to our listener on the voice. In psycholinguistic models of speech processing and production, the lemma is the mental representation of a concept that contains both semantic and syntactic meaning, linking an idea to the sounds needed to express the idea. Join Ashleigh Reade as explores how to bridge the gap between actor and text, examining how psycholinguistics can support our voice and speech teaching.