We were delighted to hear that our grant proposal submitted to the ESRC entitled ‘Speech masking effects in speech communication across the lifespan’ had been funded (£482k research council contribution). Investigators are Valerie Hazan, Outi Tuomainen and Stuart Rosen, with Ann Bradlow (Northwestern U) as external collaborator. The grant will fund Outi full-time as well as a research assistant for 18 months. We hope to start in June 2017.