Event Speakers
Meet the 2027 Conference Speakers
Organising committee
Shiying Hey
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Miss Shiying Hey is a fellowship trained Consultant ENT Surgeon and Laryngologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, specialising in voice, airway and swallowing disorders, with a particular interest in professional and artistic voice users.
Following specialist ENT training in the East of Scotland, she undertook the Royal College of Surgeons of England-accredited Laryngology fellowship at Guy’s Hospital, with further subspecialist training at leading international centres, including Massachusetts General Hospital Voice Center in Boston and University Hospital of Rouen in France, developing expertise in phonomicrosurgery and neurolaryngology.
Her practice spans the full spectrum of laryngology, using both office-based and general anaesthetic approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
She has a strong interest in education, training and mentorship and is regularly invited as faculty and speaker at national and international courses and meetings. She founded and directs the Young European Laryngological Society mentoring programme. She also sits on the Executive Committee of the European Examination Board in Laryngology, with responsibility for setting and maintaining Laryngology examination standards across Europe.
With a keen interest in advancing clinical care, she works closely with colleagues across Europe and internationally on multiple collaborative scientific and educational initiatives through organisations including the ELS and UEP. She also hosts The Voice Box, the official podcast of the Union of European Phoniatricians.
A strong advocate for patients and best-practice clinical pathways, she has worked with NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme to advance office-based laryngology services. Through BLA Council, she is committed to advancing laryngology as a subspecialty through education, collaboration, innovation and patient-centred care.
Tori Burnay
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Tori is the clinical lead speech and language therapist in voice at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Trust. This role involves a significant commitment to the development of the laryngology provision, including patient pathway development, clinical innovation, training, research, and audit. She has considerable experience in training SLTs at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, running courses through the RSCLT CENs and independently, as well as being a lecturer at UCL on the Speech Therapy MSc. She provides clinical supervision to voice specialist SLTs and other voice professionals and delivers lectures at national and international conferences. She has been a member of the British Laryngological Association since its inception and an integral member of the British Voice Association, sitting on the Education Working Party for nine years, coordinating many conferences, collaborating with laryngology professionals, academics, and the wider MDT, across the globe. She chairs the annual BVA Voice Clinics Forum and the Vocal Health Committee for The British Association for Performing Arts Medicine.
Tori states “It is an honour to join the BLA council as the SLT Representative for the next term to focus on extending the wonderful work of the association, bringing developments in the field to the membership and encouraging dissemination of information of existing and new treatment approaches linking organisations across the globe with a therapeutic perspective.”
Justin Roe
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Justin is a Consultant Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) specialising in laryngology and head and neck oncology. He is a Consultant and Professional Lead in the Department of Speech, Voice and Swallowing at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust (RM) in London. He is also a senior member of the Centre for Applied Cancer Research and leads the survivorship theme for the International Centre for Recurrent Head and Neck Cancer (IReC) at RM. From 2016-2026, he established and led a dedicated SLT/ swallowing service at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust supporting the National Centre for Airway Reconstruction and Complex Laryngology service. He is a Professor of Practice in Speech and Swallowing Rehabilitation in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London.
Justin was awarded his PhD from the Institute of Cancer Research in 2013. He has been a co-investigator on several NIHR portfolio studies focused on head and neck cancer treatment outcomes including the DARS and TORPEdO studies and is chief investigator on the NIHR-funded CONSIDER study. He has published extensively and contributed to key policy and position papers, acting as an expert adviser to several national/ international organisations. He is currently SLT Council Member for the British Laryngological Association and President of the UK Swallowing Research Group. Justin was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in 2018 and an MBE in the 2022 Queen’s New Year’s Honours in recognition of his contribution to the SLT profession.
Chadwan Al Yaghchi
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Mr Chadwan Al Yaghchi is a consultant laryngologist at the National Centre for Airway Reconstruction at Imperial College Healthcare. His specialist areas of interest are airway stenosis and complex dysphagia. He completed his higher surgical training in Ear Nose and Throat in the London North Thames regional rotation and laryngology training at Charing Cross Hospital.
Mr Al Yaghchi holds a PhD in Molecular Oncology from Queen Mary’s University of London, studying oncolytic viruses in head and neck cancers. In addition, he has an active clinical research program in voice, airway and swallowing disorders. He published multiple book chapters, 30 peer-reviewed articles and is currently the Laryngology Section editor of Scott-Brown’s Otolaryngology.
Mr Al Yaghchi is an internationally renowned specialist in gender-affirming voice surgery. He introduced a number of voice feminisation procedures to the UK, including his own modification to the Wendler Glottoplasty technique and Vocal Fold Muscle Reduction. He is a founding member of the International Association of TransVoice Surgeons.
Keynote speakers
Event Speakers
Nicholas Gibbins
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Mr Nicholas Gibbins FRCS (ORL-HNS), MD
Mr Nicholas Gibbins is a Consultant Laryngologist and Head & Neck Surgeon at the University Hospital Lewisham. Trained in London and the South-East of England, Nick has built a reputation as an excellent surgeon, teacher and lecturer. Patient outcomes are a key focus for Nick and, along with the whole of the renowned voice team at Lewisham, has built the largest Voice Database in Europe to analyse outcomes.
His key interests in the voice are the diagnosis and treatment of vocal fold scars and sulci, and the care and treatment of the professional voice. More recently he has been sought after to lecture on musculoskeletal problems that can either originate in the larynx causing muscle tension imbalance or that arising distally and effect the biomechanics of the voice. He has built a team that can address all these issues that includes speech therapists, osteopaths, vocal rehabilitation coaches, kinetic chain specialists, gastroenterologists, neurologists and more.
He writes and publishes regularly and is the current Editor of the Chapter on the Larynx for Gray’s Anatomy (43rd Ed).
BLA President 2025 – 2027
Declan Costello
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Declan Costello is a consultant ear, nose and throat surgeon specialising in voice disorders. He studied music at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he was a choral scholar, and went on to study medicine at Imperial College. As a singer himself, he has a particular interest in treating voice disorders in performers. Having worked for ten years in Birmingham as a consultant, he moved to Wexham Park Hospital in Berkshire in 2018. He has published a number of books and has written many chapters, including the chapter on “Larynx” for the 42nd edition of “Gray’s Anatomy”.
Amongst his non-clinical duties, he is the editor of ENT & Audiology News magazine. He was on the Presidential Council of the European Laryngological Society until June 2025 and is an examiner for the EBE-ORLHNS.
He continues to sing regularly with a number of different groups.
From September 2026, he has been a Council member of the Laryngology and Rhinology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Declan was President of the BLA from 2023-5
Nick Hamilton
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Mr Nick Hamilton is a Consultant Laryngologist and ENT surgeon at the Royal National Ear Nose and Throat Hospital and an Associate Professor at University College London.
Nick completed ENT specialist training in London’s North Thames Deanery where he gained expertise in all areas of general ENT and Laryngology. He undertook a fellowship in Laryngeal Surgery at the MGH Voice Centre in Boston, USA. During this time, he gained focused training on the management of complex voice and airway disorders and the care of the professional voice user.
Nick holds a PhD in regenerative medicine from UCL and has an academic interest in the latest treatments for vocal cord ageing, scarring and paralysis. He is also interested in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic throat symptoms and chronic cough.
Anthony Rotman
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Anthony is a Laryngologist based in Melbourne, Australia. After obtaining his Fellowship from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 2019, he completed fellowship training in the United Kingdom, first at the National Centre for Airway Reconstruction, Charing Cross Hospital, focusing on endoscopic and open approaches to disorders of the voice box and trachea. He then did a further Laryngology Fellowship at Poole Hospital with an emphasis on local anaesthetic procedures for voice and swallowing disorders. Since returning to Australia, Anthony takes an active role in teaching as supervisor of training at Monash Health, as well as honorary lecturer at Melbourne and Monash Universities. He actively participates in clinical research and is former vice-president of the Australian Voice Association. He is here today to present…..
Tori Burnay
Read bio
Tori is the clinical lead speech and language therapist in voice at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals NHS Trust. This role involves a significant commitment to the development of the laryngology provision, including patient pathway development, clinical innovation, training, research, and audit. She has considerable experience in training SLTs at undergraduate and post-graduate levels, running courses through the RSCLT CENs and independently, as well as being a lecturer at UCL on the Speech Therapy MSc. She provides clinical supervision to voice specialist SLTs and other voice professionals and delivers lectures at national and international conferences. She has been a member of the British Laryngological Association since its inception and an integral member of the British Voice Association, sitting on the Education Working Party for nine years, coordinating many conferences, collaborating with laryngology professionals, academics, and the wider MDT, across the globe. She chairs the annual BVA Voice Clinics Forum and the Vocal Health Committee for The British Association for Performing Arts Medicine.
Tori states “It is an honour to join the BLA council as the SLT Representative for the next term to focus on extending the wonderful work of the association, bringing developments in the field to the membership and encouraging dissemination of information of existing and new treatment approaches linking organisations across the globe with a therapeutic perspective.”
Justin Roe
Read bio
Justin is a Consultant Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) specialising in laryngology and head and neck oncology. He is a Consultant and Professional Lead in the Department of Speech, Voice and Swallowing at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust (RM) in London. He is also a senior member of the Centre for Applied Cancer Research and leads the survivorship theme for the International Centre for Recurrent Head and Neck Cancer (IReC) at RM. From 2016-2026, he established and led a dedicated SLT/ swallowing service at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust supporting the National Centre for Airway Reconstruction and Complex Laryngology service. He is a Professor of Practice in Speech and Swallowing Rehabilitation in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London.
Justin was awarded his PhD from the Institute of Cancer Research in 2013. He has been a co-investigator on several NIHR portfolio studies focused on head and neck cancer treatment outcomes including the DARS and TORPEdO studies and is chief investigator on the NIHR-funded CONSIDER study. He has published extensively and contributed to key policy and position papers, acting as an expert adviser to several national/ international organisations. He is currently SLT Council Member for the British Laryngological Association and President of the UK Swallowing Research Group. Justin was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in 2018 and an MBE in the 2022 Queen’s New Year’s Honours in recognition of his contribution to the SLT profession.
*The programme is preliminary and may be subject to change up to and including the day of the event