Professor Bill Hardcastle is Emeritus Professor of Speech Sciences in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. From 1974 to 1993 he worked in the Department of Linguistic Science at Reading University where he was Professor of Speech Science and Director of the Speech Research Laboratory.

From 1993 to 2002 he was firstly Head of the Department of Speech and Language Sciences at QMU, then Dean of Health Sciences and Dean of Research. He has published a number of books and over 120 articles in areas such as the mechanisms of speech production, instrumental clinical phonetics and sensorimotor control in both normal and pathological speech. For his research on electropalatography, a technique to improve diagnosis and treatment of speech disorders, he received the 2006 Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran award from the Foundation for Science and Technology.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, a member of the Norwegian Academy of science and Letters and holds Honorary Doctorates from both Edinburgh Napier and Queen Margaret Universities. He has been the lead applicant on many grants funded by bodies such as UK Research Councils including recent major MRC-funded grant exploring speech motor control problems in children with Down Syndrome. From 1991 till 2000 he was President of the International Association of Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics. He was a member of the Linguistics Panel for the 2001 and 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercises.