Staff profile

Lenka has obtained her Master Degree in general anthropology with a focus on ethology and sociocultural anthropology at the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She joined the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre in 2020 as a researcher under the supervision of Helen Ball and Charlotte Russell. She is also member of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA).

Lenka is currently researching sleep differences and co-sleeping in toddlerhood. She is interested in: co-sleeping, cross-cultural parental approaches, long term breastfeeding, natural birth practices and bonding, baby wearing and the medicalization of sleeplessness.

Lenka is the founder of ProsimSpinkej.cz , a czech baby-sleep project, within which she supports parents in gentle parenting and organises workshops and seminars for professionals about normal infant sleep. Lenka Medvecová Tinková is commonly perceived as a sleep expert in the Czech Republic and has appeared in national television both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. She provides expert commentary about baby and child sleep on radio stations, press, parenting websites and television. She is also the author of two books published in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - S láskou o dÄ›tském spánku (With Love About Children´s Sleep), and Pohádkopsaní pro klidné spaní (Fairy Tales for Calm Sleep).

Journal Article

• Medvecová Tinková, L., & Ball, H. L. (2022). Lost in translation - the influence of language on infant sleep research. Sleep Health, 8(1), 96-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2021.10.010