About Martin Nunn
A message from Martin Nunn's family
Martin Nunn's journey with aphasia began when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour located in Broca's area. At that time, our son Ashton was just 15 months old. After Martin's first surgeries, he experienced mild aphasia, but his communication challenges became far more pronounced when Ashton was four years old and Martin required more aggressive treatment to control the cancer.
We witnessed firsthand how devastating aphasia can be. There were times when Martin's ability to communicate was reduced to just "yes" or "no" responses due to swelling in his brain. Martin was known for his dry sense of humour and his ability to connect with people through wit and timing—attributes that aphasia sadly took away.
Raising a child is always demanding, but for Martin, it was even more challenging when he couldn't express himself easily. It was frustrating for him to lose his audience or feel ignored simply because finding the right words became so difficult. Many assumed he could "just write it down," but aphasia affects every aspect of communication—even texting was often more difficult for him than speaking.
While technology didn't offer much support, Martin found some comfort in using simple tools like a whiteboard and pen, and a laminated sheet featuring photos of people, activities, and important words he could point to.
Martin lived with aphasia for over ten years, and the impact was felt by our whole family. We know how important research is in finding ways to make life better for those affected by acquired communication difficulties.
The Martin Nunn Prize honours Martin's resilience and aims to inspire students to conduct meaningful research in speech-language therapy. We are deeply grateful to everyone who contributes to improving the lives of individuals and families living with aphasia.
Martin contributed hugely to the speech-language therapy profession, as well as receiving services himself from SLTs over the years. He participated in a range of groups, including The More Than Words Gavel Club and the CeleBRation Choir, both community initiatives at the Centre for Brain Research at The University of Auckland.
Martin's involvement in these therapeutic communities continued for years; in later years via video link when he couldn't attend in person. He sometimes participated in research projects linked to those groups and worked with student speech-language therapists who were also involved. He was also interviewed by a range of speech-language therapy students over the years and presented to groups of audiology and speech-language therapy students via videos he was persuaded into making with some of us who are Trustees.
Martin presented at several conferences related to aphasia, sharing his experiences of living with this language impairment. His willingness to undertake these presentations in light of the huge difficulties that sometimes occurred with word-finding and expressing his ideas was remarkable, but his presentations were frank, funny (Martin had the best sense of humour—so dry and witty) and opened people's eyes to some of his everyday realities of living with an acquired communication difficulty and how it impacted his life, for example as a parent and as a relatively young person.
Martin was also prepared to advocate. There is a story about Martin on the New Zealand Speech-Language Therapists' Association (NZSTA) website advocacy page. He also joined one of the NZSTA advisors in an oral submission to a parliamentary Select Committee about legislation, so that the MPs on that committee could hear the perspective of someone living with aphasia.
Further information
For more information about aphasia and acquired communication difficulties, visit Aphasia New Zealand.
Aphasia can often be caused by stroke. More information is available on the University of Auckland stroke blog.
To find out more about what speech-language therapists do and how to become a speech-language therapist, visit the NZSTA careers page.
Martin had a long association with speech-language therapists at The University of Auckland and with the Centre for Brain Research community initiatives.