Diana Eades

Biography

Diana Eades is a Adjunct Associate Professor at University of New England studied linguistics as an undergraduate at Australian National University and received her PhD in linguistic anthropology at University of Queensland.

After initial salvage grammar work on NSW coastal languages, she has specialised since the late 1970s in Aboriginal ways of communicating using English, with a particular focus on intercultural communication in the legal process. Her recent work is within a critical sociolinguistics approach, examining the role of courtroom language in the continuing process of neocolonial control.

Since its establishment in 1993, Diana has been actively involved in the International Association of Forensic Linguists (of which she has variously been President, Vice-President and Secretary). She has been co-editor of The International Journal of Speech Language and the Law since 2006.

Diana has also worked with linguists around the world in establishing guidelines for the use of language analysis in relation to questions of origin of asylum seekers. In addition to her scholarly publications, she has presented many workshops and invited talks to judges, lawyers and magistrates, and has given expert evidence in several cases.