Biographies
Cynthia L. Allen FAHA
Reader in the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University and the Director the Centre for Research on Language Change at ANU.
Cynthia L. Allen (BA, University of Iowa and PhD University of Massachusetts at Amherst) was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1996. She specialises in history of English grammar and her recent publications include the article ‘English: Old English’ in Elsevier’s Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics (2006) and a chapter in the Blackwell’s Handbook of the History of English (2006).
Meredith Bartlett
Research Unit for Multilingualism and Cross-Cultural Communication, School of languages, University of Melbourne.
Meredith Bartlett first had contact with the Deaf community as a teacher of the deaf at the Victorian School for Deaf Children in the 1970s. She was one of the first freelance interpreters in Victoria in the early 1980s and worked concurrently as a welfare worker for the deaf for 7 years. Later she spent four years working as an interpreter in secondary and tertiary settings. She joined the Victorian Deaf Society again in 1998 on a full time basis as a staff interpreter, and has been teaching part-time in the Diploma of Interpreting at RMIT for 10 years. Meredith gained her MA in Applied Linguistics from Monash University in 2000, and is currently studying for a PhD in Linguistics at Melbourne University.
Meredith’s studies for the MA and now the PhD included bilingualism in spoken and sign/spoken language settings. These studies led to writing, with Sandra Leane, the booklet ‘Raising Deaf Children Bilingually in Australia’, and captioning the video from Monash University, called ‘Growing up with English Plus’. The aim of both these projects was to provide some easily accessible resources for parents and teachers of deaf children in Auslan/English bilingual families and classrooms.
Patricia Clancy
Honorary Principal Fellow in the Department of French and Italian Studies at Melbourne University.
Patricia Clancy was a member of the French Department from 1960-88 at Melboune University. She taught and published in various fields, including the 18th century novel, 18th century women’s education, 18th century women’s journalism, the beginnings of children’s literature in France, including fairy tales, contemporary theatre, and French writing on colonial Australia. She has also written two textbooks on French Composition and French Cuisine.
Since retirement Dr Clancy has continued to research, write and publish works of literary translation and French-Australian literature.
Michael Clyne FAHA
Honorary Professorial Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne and Emeritus Professor of Monash University, having held professorial appointments in Linguistics at both universities.
Michael Clyne’s main fields of research and publication are sociolinguistics, bilingualism/language contact, and inter-cultural communication. His publications include Language and Society in the German-speaking Countries (1984), and its sequel The German Language in a Changing Europe (1995), Community Languages: The Australian Experience (1991), Pluricentric Languages (editor, 1992), Inter-Cultural Communication at Work (1994), Undoing and Redoing Corpus Planning (editor, 1997), Dynamics of Language Contact (2003) and Australia’s Language Potential (2005).
Aaron Corn
Australian Research Council Australian Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Sydney.
Aaron Corn has worked closely with Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land for a decade. He graduated from Griffith University in Brisbane where he majored in clarinet and musicology at the Queensland Conservatorium, and from the University of Melbourne where he lectured in Australian Indigenous Studies under the direction of Professor Marcia Langton from 2001–03 while completing a PhD in Music. At Melbourne, he was a driving force in the development and delivery of curricula to complement the experiences of students attending the Garma Festival of Traditional Culture at Gulkula in North-East Arnhem Land, and began teaching their new equivalents in collaboration with The Koori Centre at Sydney in 2005. Dr Corn became Secretary to the annual Symposium on Indigenous Performance at the Garma Festival in 2002. His current Australian Research Council Discovery Project, ‘When the Waters Will Be One’, explores the application of performance traditions from Arnhem Land to new inter-cultural discourses by hereditary owners.
Alan Dench FAHA
Head of School, School of Humanities, University of Western Australia.
Alan Dench is an expert in Australian Aboriginal languages, and his research interests include grammatical description, typological comparison and historical reconstruction of Australian Aboriginal languages, especially those of the Pilbara region of north-west Western Australia, syntactic reconstruction, subgrouping methodology and the nature of language contact, and reconstitution and grammatical analysis of the Nyungar language of the south-west of Western Australia. His published works include Martuthunira: A Language of the Pilbara Region of Western Australia (1995) and Yingkarta (1998). He was elected to the Academy in 2002.
Rifaat Ebied FAHA
Department of Semitic Studies, School of Languages and Culture, University of Sydney.
Rifaat Ebied’s research interests include apocrypha and pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, patristic studies, Arabic and Syriac philosophical and medical works of Aristotle, Galen and Rhazes, Muslim-Christian relations in the Middle Ages, and Mandaean studies, and has published many journal articles and books on these topics. He was elected to the Academy in 1982.
Waymamba Gaykamangu
Gupapuyngu Elder.
Waymamba Gaykamangu was born, lived and worked on Milingimbi until 1989. After sixteen years teaching at Milingimbi School she then moved to Darwin in 1990 to begin working in Curriculum Branch of the Northern Territory Department of Education. In 1994 Waymamba was engaged as an Adviser to Northern Territory University. In the following year, she was employed as lecturer in Yolngu Studies at Charles Darwin University. Since that date she has continued lecturing, developing Yolngu Studies resources and research.
David Graddol
The English Company (UK).
David Graddol is a researcher and applied linguist, formerly of the Open University, and now with the English Company, a specialist producer of books and e-learning materials in applied linguistics and English language teaching. He is well known as a writer, broadcaster and consultant on issues relating to global English. His most recent publication, English Next (2006), commissioned by the British Council, draws attention to the extraordinary speed of change to issues affecting English, which were identified in the 1997 publication, The Future of English. His previous publications include English in a Changing World (with Ulrike Hanna Meinhof, 1997), Redesigning English: New Texts, New Identities (with Sharon Goodman, 1997), and History of the English Language: History Diversity and Change (1996).
John Greatorex
Coordinator of the Yolngu Studies at Charles Darwin University.
John began teaching at school on Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island) in 1978 and continued to be employed there until 2004. During this time on Galiwin’ku he was engaged with the Yolngu Studies team to deliver remote programs in Arnhem Land. In 2005 John was appointed Coordinator of the Yolngu Studies at Charles Darwin University, where he continues to be involved in the development of teaching materials, teaching and research.
Joe Gumbula
Gupapuyngu Yolngu Elder, Elcho Island, Arnhem Land and board member of the Yothu Yindi Foundation.
Joe Neparrnga Gumbula has taught contemporary music at the Northern Territory University, and lectured in Australian Indigenous Studies and Education at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. His research interests include the exploration of archival possibilities for Yolngu material, and especially the collection of Yolngu intellectual traditions for future generations, especially through dance, music and design. He has authored two articles on musical creativity in North-east Arnhem land with Aaron Corn. He directs the Galiwin’ku Indigenous Knowledge Centre, and is a leading authority on Yolngu law, knowledges and material culture. He contributes to numerous research projects as part of his cultural survival and commences as an ARC Indigenous Research Fellow at the University of Sydney in 2007.
Mabel Lee FAHA
Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, and was an academic member at the University between 1966-2000.
Mabel Lee has been co-editor of the University of Sydney East Asian Series and the University of Sydney World Literature Series since the mid-1980s, and for twenty years was assistant editor of The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA). She is internationally known for her translations of 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian’s novels Soul Mountain (2000) and One Man’s Bible (2002), his collection of short stories Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (2004), and his collection of critical writings The Case for Literature (2006), and for her translations of 1999 Flaiano International Prize for Poetry winner Yang Lian: Masks and Crocodile (1990), The Dead in Exile (1990) and Yi (2002).
She was awarded the NSW Premier’s Prize for Translation and the PEN Medallion (2001), the Centenary of Federation Medal for service to Australian society and literature (2003), and the University of Sydney Alumni Award for her commitment to the promotion of Asian scholarship and creativity in Australia (2003).
Mary Louise Pratt
Silver Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at New York University. Olive H. Palmer Professor of Humanities (Emerita), Stanford University.
Mary Louise Pratt holds a BA in Modern Languages and Literatures from the University of Toronto, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Illinois, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. She is author of Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (1978), Linguistics for Students of Literature (with Elizabeth Closs Traugott, 1980), Women, Culture and Politics in Latin America (co-authored, 1990), and Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992)
Joseph Lo Bianco FAHA
Chair of Language and Literacy Education, University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor, Language Education, University of Hong Kong.
Joseph Lo Bianco has worked on language policy, literacy planning, bilingualism and multicultural education in many countries including Australia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Western Samoa and Scotland. His recent books include: Australian Literacies: Informing National Policy on Literacy Education (with Peter Freebody, 2001), Australian Policy Activism in Language and Literacy (with Rosie Wickert, 2001), Voices from Phnom Penh, Development and Language (2002), Teaching Invisible Culture: Classroom Practice and Theory (with Chantal Crozet, 2003), and Language Policy in Australia (Council of Europe, 2004).
Tim Mehigan FAHA
Foundation Chair of Languages and Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Otago, New Zealand.
Formerly at the University of Melbourne, Tim Mehigan was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Munich in 1994 and 1995, and has been President of the German Studies Association of Australia since 2003. He has published extensively in English and German on German literature, particularly the authors Heinrich von Kleist and Robert Musil. In recent work he has investigated the Enlightenment, German idealism and the post-Kantian philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Uldis Ozolins
Lecturer in Politics and Honorary Research Fellow, La Trobe University.
Former head of the Translating & Interpreting (T&I) program at Deakin University in Melbourne, and is a co-author of Liaison Interpreting (1996) as well as numerous other studies on T&I with a particular attention to policy issues. He is currently a Lecturer in Politics and an Honorary Research Fellow at La Trobe University and pursues research on intercultural relations and Australian and international language policy
Pam Peters
Personal Chair in Linguistics at Macquarie University, and Director of its Dictionary Research Centre.
Pam Peters is a member of the Editorial Committee of the Macquarie Dictionary, and of the ABC’s Standing Committee on Spoken English. Her major publications are the Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (1995) and the Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004). She also directs the Graduate Program in Editing and Publishing at Macquarie University, which provides higher degrees in editing and publishing. She also convenes the Style Council conferences, and has contributed six chapters to the Australian Government Style Manual (2002).
Haami Piripi
Chief Executive Officer of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Maori (The Maori Language Commission) and Humanities Council Member.
Haami is not strictly an academic but has spent thirty years working in the public and Maori sectors across a spectrum of activities.
He has a Bachelor of Social Work degree majoring in Counselling and Sociology and is an exponent of Maori language and culture.
Anthony Pym
Director of postgraduate programs in translation, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.
Anthony Pym works on sociological approaches to translation and intercultural communication. He is the author of Translation and Text Transfer (1992), Epistemological Problems in Translation and its Teaching (1993), Pour une éthique du traducteur (1997), Method in Translation History (1998), Negotiating the Frontier: Translators and Intercultures in Hispanic History (2000), The Moving Text: Localisation, Distribution, and Translation (2004), and some 120 academic articles. He has edited or co-edited the volumes L’Internationalité littéraire (1988), Mites australians (1990), Les formations en traduction et interprétation. Essai de recensement mondial (1995), Innovation and E-learning in Translator Training (2003), Translation Technology and its Teaching (2006), Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting (2006), and the two series Translation Theories Explained and Translation Practices Explained (St. Jerome).
Farzad Sharifian
Postgraduate Coordinator of the Program of English as an International Language, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.
Farzad Sharifian has carried out extensive research in several areas of linguistics and applied linguistics focusing on Aboriginal English, Persian, and English as an International Language. He has published numerous articles in international journals such as World Englishes, Anthropological Linguistics, Pragmatics & Cognition, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, and Journal of Cognition and Culture. Farzad was an ARC Post-Doctoral Fellow from 2003 to 2005 and has received multiple awards for his research including Edith Cowan University’s Research Medal.
Edwin Thumboo
Professorial Fellow, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.
Edwin Thumboo is a celebrated Singaporean poet, and became a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore, and later Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, until 1991, teaching Elizabethan/Jacobean drama, the Romantic poets, Singapore and Malaysian Literatures, and creative writing courses in addition to tutoring the other major areas of English studies. His research interests included the modern novel, the novels of Empire, Commonwealth literature and Shakespeare (the Roman plays).
He is considered to be Singapore’s unofficial poet laureate since independence, and has published seven volumes of poetry. He won the National Book Development Council of Singapore Awards in 1978 and 1994, and the inaugural S.E.A. Write Award in 1979, the Cultural Medallion for Literature in SIngapore in 1980, and the ASEAN Cultural Communication Award (Literature) in 1987. His works include Rib of Earth (1956), The Gods Can Die (1977), Ulysses by the Merlion (1979) and A Third Map (1993). He has also edited several anthologies.