Before joining EIF, Elspeth completed her PhD and worked as an ESRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, researching aspects of child language development. Her PhD in linguistics, within the field of experimental pragmatics, investigated how children learn to make inferences to understand what people mean in conversation (their pragmatic development). During her postdoctoral fellowship, she also looked at how this connects with learning how to make reading inferences in the classroom. Previously she completed a BA in Russian and German at the University of Cambridge, and has lived and worked in both Russia and Germany.

She has also worked as a research assistant on projects about multilingual language development and family language policy, and has been an active team member of the Cambridge Bilingualism Network, a public engagement initiative which seeks to disseminate and promote research findings and evidence-based practice to multilingual families and to practitioners.