Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Dr Laura Simpson Reeves is a Research Fellow in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work at The University of Queensland, and a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre. She is a highly experienced qualitative social researcher with a strong background across the social sciences and humanities. Her research broadly aims to understand social and cultural responses to inequity and disadvantage, with a strong focus on lived experience. Laura works with vulnerable and marginalised groups at the nexus of culture and disadvantage, especially around ethnicity, gender and sexuality, poverty, and experiences of exclusion and discrimination. She has a particular focus and interest in diaspora and issues around belonging, identity, acculturation, and social cohesion/isolation. Her current research explores family inclusion and children's voices, especially in relation to child protection.
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
I am a passionate researcher with a background in computer science and a strong commitment to leveraging technology for the betterment of society. I hold a PhD in Image Forensics and have had the privilege of conducting postdoctoral research at prestigious institutions such as SUNY Albany and Dartmouth College, where I had the opportunity to collaborate closely with Prof. Hany Farid.
During my postdoc at Dartmouth College, I focused my research efforts on addressing a critical societal issue - real-time child pornography detection. This research not only garnered recognition within the academic community but also earned praise from luminaries like Prof. Ramesh Raskar at MIT, who invited me to share my insights through a talk at MIT.
I primarily works in the area of Cyber Security, Digital Forensics, Privacy and Security Aspects, Homomorphic Encryption and Cloud Computing.
As I continue my research journey, I remain committed to making a positive impact through innovation and collaboration. I am excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and the potential for technology to create a safer and more inclusive world.
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
I am an early career postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Ian Frazer's laboratory. I am a self-motivated young scientist with a research focus on cell and cancer biology, genomic instability, tumour immunology, and cellular therapies. I pursued my doctoral studies under the guidance of Prof. Kum Kum Khanna in QIMR Berghofer and conferred in April 2018, from Griffith University. Prior to my PhD, I acquired a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology, awarded in August 2013 from VIT University, India. After my PhD, I perused my first postdoctoral research experience under the supervision of Prof. Rajiv Khanna at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. Throughout my PhD studies, my research was focused on the development of novelcombinatorial therapeutic strategies against aggressive solid cancers . I have a strong interest in understanding the relationship between cancer signalling pathways and tumour microenvironment in aggressive malignancies.
Ashish Sinha, Professor of Marketing at UQ Business School and Visiting Professor of Marketing & Research Fellow at the Indian School of Business. He has previously held senior leadership positions in both industry and academia, including Academic Dean of Executive Education (ISB), Associate Dean (Research), Interim Dean and Acting Head of Economics at UTS Business School, and Professor and Head of School of Marketing at University of New South Wales (UNSW); Vice President, Analytics Insights group at IRI, Chicago, USA.
As the Academic Dean of ExecED at ISB, he led the digital transformaiton of the Executive Education culminating in the ExecED program being ranked Financial Times #38 in the world for Custom Programs. In the role of ADR and the defacto co-Internal Dean, he led the transformation of the UTS Business School into an externally-engaged research powerhouse, that culminated in the school being ranked in the top 3 Business Schools in Australia as per ERA 2018.
He currently holds or previously held visiting appointments at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hong Kong Polytech University and University of Alberta.
His work has appeared in many academic and trade journals, including Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Retailing, Marketing Letters, the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, the Journal of Business Research, European Marketing Journal, Industrial Marketing Management and Australasian Marketing Journal.
He is also a recipient of many academic awards including Davidson Award for Best Journal of Retailing Paper and is twice runner-up for the Gary Lilien Practice Award for the significant impact that his work has made to the practice of business. He is the winner of the 2013 ANZMAC Distinguished Researcher Award and became an ANZMAC Fellow in 2016.
He has supervised to completion 10 PhD students, several of them hold senior academic & practitioner positions, and are recipents of academic awards including, 2016 ANZMAC Layton Best Dissertation Award and a 2022 finalist for the AMA (American Marketing Association)/Howard Best Dissertation Award.
Affiliate of Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies
Centre for Digital Cultures & Societies
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Senior Lecturer
School of Languages and Cultures
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
I am Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at The University of Queensland (UQ).
My research interests lie within the broad areas of pragmatics and discourse analysis, particularly, the pragmatics of social interaction (face-to-face and online), identity construction, humour, (im)politeness, getting acquainted and family talk. I have been working with different types of data, including naturally-occurring conversations, reality television discourse, qualitative interviews, corpora and social media.
I am Associate Editor in the Journal of Pragmatics and the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics journal, and an Editorial Board member in Advances in (Im)politeness Studies (book series), Springer.
I regularly review grant applications and I am a member of:
College of Experts, European Science Foundation (from 2021)
Review College, FWO (Research Foundation – Flanders) (2024-2027)
I'm originally from Lithuania, where I graduated from BA in English Philology and MA in English Studies. While at university, I spent part of my study period in Spain (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Quebec (Université de Montréal). After teaching two years at Vilnius University, in 2012 I started my PhD in Linguistics at the IPrA Research Center at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. After my PhD studies, I joined UQ as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and then in a continuing position as Lecturer.
I've always loved languages, maybe because I've always been surrounded by a variety of them. I'm a native speaker of Lithuanian (lietuvių) and Russian (русский), I spent many years studying and then also teaching English and I also have a certificate for teaching Spanish as a foreign language (español como lengua extranjera ELE). Due to my study/research relocations, I can also communicate (sometimes extremely poorly) in Dutch (nederlands), French (français) and Portuguese (português), and at the moment I'm struggling with Modern Greek (ελληνικά) and Japanese (日本語)!
Chilmeg Elden (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): The establishment and management of interpersonal relationships in early encounters between Australian and Japanese language exchange partners
Zhiyi Liu (principal supervisor; with Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang and Prof Ping Chen): Relationship management in everyday Mainland Chinese and Chinese-Australian family talk
Andrea Rodriguez (principal supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): The role of categorical membership and accountability in the negotiation of action ascription
Nicholas Hugman (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Footballer identity, humour, and the digital interactional domain
Chantima Wangsomchok (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Conversational humour in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) workplaces
PhD (completed)
(2023) Amir Sheikhan (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh and Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang): Conversational humour in intercultural initial interactions in English
MA (current)
MA (completed)
(2025) Marlene Valdés Fuentes: “Mamá, por favor, ¿me dejas que me ponga ahí?: A multimodal analysis of a toddler’s requests in Spanish family interactions
(2023) Yeisy Vanessa Maldonado Ramirez: Reporting offence to friends in Spanish: A pragmatic analysis of moral grounds and impolite behaviour
(2023) Shea-Lea Wheeler: A discourse study of fictional self-presentation in Dungeons & Dragons gameplay
(2021) Zhiyi Liu: Constructing identities of a mother and an older sister/adult child: Membership categorization analysis of Chinese-Australian family talk
(2021) Maria Nagao: English teachers of young learners in Japan: A discourse analytical study on identity construction
(2021) Shupei Ni: Relational work in video game live-streaming interactions: Case studies of jocular abuse and joint fantasizing
(2021) Andrea Rodriguez: “Ay no, I do feel exhausted”: Interactional co-construction and interpersonal management of complaints in Spanish phone conversations between friends and relatives
(2020) Duyen Hong Ngoc Luong: Teaching English as a foreign language in Vietnam: Teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the English-only approach and code-switching in the classroom
Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Andrea Rodriguez (eds). (2026 forthcoming). Rules of engagement: Relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse.
2022-present: "Family talk in multilingual Australia"
2025 (February-April): "‘Who we are’ in multilingual Australia: Language and identity construction in family talk" funded by a Fellowship at the Leibniz-Institute for the German Language (IDS), Mannheim, Germany
2023: "Talking families into being: Analysing family interactions in Australian multilingual context" funded by Research Fund, School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
2022: "‘Who we are’ in multilingual Brisbane: Family talk in Spanish and Russian speech communities" funded by HASS Enabler Funding Scheme (HASS EFS), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (UQ)
2021: "Conversational humour in multilingual Australia: A closer look at Tennant Creek’s Indigenous and Brisbane’s Spanish speech communities" (with Dr Samantha Disbray and Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang) funded by Strategic Researh Initiative Fund (SRIF), School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
2021: ""I'm nearly old enough to be your mother": Using membership categorisation analysis to explore identity construction in getting acquainted interactions" funded by ECR Support Scheme, School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
2020-2021: "The co-construction and negotiation of multilingual and multicultural identities in Australia: A case study of online interactions" funded by Targeted Research Support Scheme, School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
2019-2022 (CI: Assoc. Prof Marta Dynel): "FUNGRESSION: Humour and impoliteness on social media" funded by National Science Centre (Poland) (2018/30/E/HS2/00644)
2018-2019 (with Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang): "How far can an Aussie joke travel? Intercultural perspectives on Australian humour" funded by Strategic Research Initiative Fund (SRIF), School of Languages and Cultures (UQ)
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (ed). 2024. Advances in the study of social action in online interaction. Internet Pragmatics https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.7.1
Haugh, Michael and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.). 2021. The pragmatics of initial interactions: Cross-cultural and intercultural perspectives. Journal of Pragmatics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-pragmatics/special-issue/10DB1P3LJJ8
Sinkeviciute, Valeria (ed.). 2019. The interplay between humour and identity construction. Journal of Pragmatics 152. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-pragmatics/vol/152/suppl/C
Dynel, Marta and Valeria Sinkeviciute (eds.). 2017. Conversational humour: Spotlight on languages and cultures. Language & Communication 55. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02715309/55?sdc=1
Reviews of my monograph "Conversational humour and (im)politeness: A pragmatics analysis of social interaction":
Yang, N. (2022). Book review: Sinkeviciute, Valeria.2019. Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Journal of Politeness Research 18(2): 451-455. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2020-0015
Tsami, V. & Saloustrou, V. (2021). Book review: Sinkeviciute, Valeria.(2018). Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. The European Journal of Humour Research 9(3): 179-183. https://europeanjournalofhumour.org/ejhr/article/view/544/556
Murphy, J. (2021). Review of Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness: A Pragmatic Analysis of Social Interaction, Valeria Sinkeviciute. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2019). 274 pp. ISBN 9789027262110 (e-book). Journal of Pragmatics 183: 105-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.010
Krendel, A. (2020). Review of Conversational Humour and (Im)politeness. Valeria Sinkeviciute, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 2019 (e-book), ISBN: 9789027262110. Corpus Pragmatics 4: 479–483.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41701-020-00086-w
22-27 June 2025 (with Andrea Rodriguez) - (Cross-)linguistic studies on relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse, at the 19th International Pragmatics Conference, IPrA2025, Brisbane, Australia
9-14 July 2023 (with Andrea Rodriguez) - Membership categorisation and interpersonal relationships in social interaction, at the 18th International Pragmatics Conference, IPrA2023, Brussels, Belgium
9-14 June 2019 (with Marta Dynel) - Aggression as (im)politeness on social media, at the 16th International Pragmatics Conference, Hong Kong
6-8 February 2019 - Metapragmatic labels and commentary on humorous practices: An (inter-)cultural perspective, at Australian Humour Studies Network conference, Melbourne, Australia
1-3 November 2018 - Panel organiser (with Wei-Lin Melody Chang), Doing ‘being ordinary’ in reality television discourse, at 4th International Conference of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA), SUNY, Albany, USA
16-21 July 2017 – From self to culture: Identity construction in humour-related discourses, at the 15th International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, Northern Ireland
26-31 July 2015 – (with Marta Dynel), The Pragmatics of Conversational Humour, at the 14th International Pragmatics Conference, Antwerp, Belgium
11 December 2024 - “Tú quieres que yo te dé un premio?”: Acción social y categorías en las conversaciones familiares. Talk at Seminario Permanente de Análisis de la Conversación (SPAC)
11-13 October 2024 - Online interaction as multimodal accomplishment of the social order. Plenary talk at the 3rd Interactional Conference on Discourse Pragmatics (ICDP-3)
21 January 2021 - Social interaction and identity construction. Guest lecture for postgraduate students at University of Maribor, Slovenia
20 January 2021 - Pragmatics and social action. Guest lecture for undergraduate students at University of Maribor, Slovenia
14 November 2019 - “Hey BCC this is Australia and we speak and read English”: Linguistic diversity and impoliteness on Brisbane City Council’s Facebook page, invited talk at Linguistics Seminar Series, School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland (https://languages-cultures.uq.edu.au/event/session/5365)
27 September 2019 - Studying linguistics, what's next? An invited speaker at UQ Linguistics Society's Careers Night.
26 May 2017 - Evaluating (im)polite interactional behaviour: From reality television to qualitative interviews, talk at the Research Seminar at the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Australia
10 May 2017 - Metapragmatics and humour, guest lecture at The University of Queensland, Australia
6 November 2015 - What makes teasing impolite? “Step[ping] over those lines […] you shouldn’t be crossing”, guest lecture at University of Antwerp, Belgium
25 November 2014 - “[Sometimes] it’s not particularly funny, [sometimes] it’s just rude”: Getting a laugh and/or taking offence to teasing, talk at the Research Seminar at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
6 December 2013 - (Im)politeness in context, guest lecture at University of Antwerp, Belgium
Journal of Pragmatics / Pragmatics / Journal of Politeness Research / Discourse Studies / Lingua / Language & Communication / Research on Language and Social Interaction / Internet Pragmatics / Discourse, Context & Media / Contrastive Pragmatics / Pragmatics and Society / Gender, Work & Organization / Sociolinguistic Studies / Pragmatics & Cognition / Journal of English for Academic Purposes / The Sociological Review
Professor of Psychiatry - NHMRC Emerging Lead Fellow (Second)
PA Southside Clinical Unit
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
Prof Siskind trained as a psychiatrist in Australia and the United States. He graduated from medicine at the University of Queensland in 1998. After working with Doctors Without Borders in Chechnya in 2000, he became interested in psychiatry. He moved to Boston in 2002, where he did his psychiatry residency at Boston University and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. He returned to Brisbane in June 2008 as a clinical academic psychiatrist at the Metro South Addiction and Mental Health Service. He completed his Ph.D in Feb 2014. His research interests include clozapine and treatment refractory schizophrenia, the physical health of people with severe and persistent mental illness, supported accommodation, assertive community treatment and mental health services research. He has been awarded an NHMRC Investigator Grant as an Emerging Leadership Fellow (2021-2025) and held an NHMRC Early Career Fellowship (2016-2019). He has a current CIA MRFF RCRDUN grant looking at treatments to reduce cardiometabolic morbidity among people with schizophrenia. He has over 200 peer reviewed publications, including first author in the highly ranked Lancet, World Psychiatry, Lancet Psychiatry, BJPsych, ANZJP, & Schizophrenia Bulletin. He is a named investigator on over $40 million in competitive research grants, with over $6 million as CIA.
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Availability:
Available for supervision
Dr Eloise Skinner is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the ODeSI research group at UQ and holds a Bachelor of Science (Zoology & Ecology majors), a Masters of Wild Animal Biology and a PhD in Epidemiology.
Dr Skinner has a background in research on the environmental and climate factors driving the transmission of environmentally mediated diseases across different spatial and temporal scales. She is particularly interested in investigating the dynamics, relative importance and impacts of land-use change, species interactions and climate change on infectious disease dynamics. Her main study system of interest is vector-borne diseases which can have diverse and unexpected outbreaks following environmental changes. Eloise's research applies spatial epidemiology, mathematical modelling and fieldwork methods to untangle the interactions between vectors, hosts and their environment across populations and landscapes.
Dr Skinner has worked with local and international governments and research institutions to identify the greatest challenges for managing vector-borne diseases. Her reserach is highly regarded in her field and she has been awarded around $350,000 of research funding since 2018.
Mariusz Skwarczynski completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1999 at Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland). His postdoctoral training began at Tokushima Bunri University (Japan) under the direction of late Professor M. Nishizawa, where he studied the biomimetic total synthesis of anticancer agent paclitaxel. He then joined the laboratory of Professor Yoshiaki Kiso at Kyoto Pharmaceutical University (Japan) to study prodrugs of paclitaxel. In 2004 he was awarded with Japanese fellowship (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science postdoctoral fellowship) and research grant to conduct further research on paclitaxel. He developed novel classes of paclitaxel prodrugs: isotaxoids and phototaxels. He also co-developed an epimerization-free method for the synthesis of novel building blocks (isodipeptides) for solid phase peptide synthesis and these units have been commercialized by Merck-Novabiochem.
In 2008 he joined Professor Istvan Toth group at University of Queensland (Australia) to work on vaccine delivery strategies. Since then, he research is mainly focused on nanotechnology-based peptide vaccine delivery approaches. In 2010 he was awarded with University of Queensland Strategic Fund Research Fellowship. In Australia, he is involved in a wide range of collaborative research projects, both nationally and internationally, to develop vaccines against GAS, HIV, hookworm infections, malaria and cancer, along with antibiotics against multidrug resistant bacteria.
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences
Affiliate Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences of Faculty of Humanities and Social
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Affiliate Associate Professor of School of Education
School of Education
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Associate Professor
Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation
Availability:
Not available for supervision
Media expert
Associate Professor Christine Slade PhD GCProfLearning BA (Com Plan & Devt) PFHEA ATCL
Assessment and Academic Integrity
In my role as Associate Professor in Higher Education, in the Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation (ITaLI) I contribute to the UQ strategic priorities, with leadership responsibilities in assessment, academic integrity and generative artificial intelligence. In 2023 I received an Australian Award for University Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning for my academic integrity work. In August 2023, I was an invited assessment expert at the TEQSA commissed Assessment Reform in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Forum which developed principles and propositions to support the sector. I also was an expert advisor of the development of the Australian Framework for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Schools.
Digital Ethics
Engaging in technology is part of everyday life, more so since COVID-19. I advocate for the inclusion of digital aspects in curricula and support educators and students in building their digital capabilities for learning and professionals in the workplace. Since 2012 I have advanced folio pedagogies to facilitate students using ePortfolios to demonstrate learning over time, reflect on their developing practices, and to showcase their digital brand to wider audiences. Important aspects of these practices is understanding and applying digital ethics and eProfessionalism principles when engaging online. Therefore, I am a member of the international Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-based Learning (AAEEBL) Taskforce on Digital Ethics and ePortfolios which has produced guiding ethical principles, strategies and scenarios for institutions, educators, administrators and students. I also partnered with the UQ Library to develop a new eProfessionalism digital essentials module for educators and students to use when building their online presence. I have a particular interest in Digital Healthcare and work with international academics and industry representatives to advance student preparation for clinical placements and future work.
Research Interests
My research and teaching interests include innovative pedagogies, assessment, academic integrity, digital curriculum, ePortfolios and ethics. I have written a suite of journal articles and other publications, and presented at national and international conferences about my research and practice (see the 'Publications' tab above).
Affiliate of Centre for Behavioural and Economic Science
Centre for Unified Behavioural and Economic Science
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
Associate Professor in Accounting
School of Business
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
Availability:
Available for supervision
Sergeja Slapničar is Associate Professor of Accounting within the UQ Business School. In her recent research, she focuses on financial quantification of cyber risk, cyber risk management, governance and assurance. She has published in many top accounting journals such as Accounting, Organizations and Society, Management Accounting Research, European Accounting Review, Journal of Management Accounting Research, European Financial Management, International Journal of Accounting Information Systems and others. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Journal of Management Control, International Journal of Auditing, and Behavioral Research in Accounting. Sergeja is a passionate educator and a recipient of the 2022 Teaching Excellence Award of the UQ Business, Economics and Law Faculty on "Enhancing Students' Employability", the 2023 UQ Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning and the 2024 Australian Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, as part of the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT).
She has extensive Board experience by serving as a non-executive Director in a systemic bank in Eurozone; in a multinational pharmaceutical corporation, on the Board of the Slovenian Agency for Public Oversight of Auditing, as a Chairwoman of the settlement committee in owners' disputes (Slovenia) and as an independent member in audit and remuneration committees of various public interest entities (the Slovenian Bad Bank among others). She has trained over 1,000 executive and non-executive directors in accounting, finance and cyber security risk management at the Slovenian Directors Association. She has advised organisations on risk management and frequently presents at national and international industry events. Prior to her employment at the UQ Business School (in 2018), Sergeja was a Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is a member of ISACA; serves on the Education Committee of the Institute of Internal Auditors Australia and on the Auditing, Assurance, and Ethics Standards Committee at the European Accounting Association.
Dr Slaughter is a teaching focused academic in the Tourism discipline of UQ Business School. Her knowledge of tourism management is supported by substantial study in the area.
After travelling extensively, Lee returned to Australia to pursue tourism studies at The University of Queensland. In 2000 Lee was awarded her doctorate which focused on backpacker tourism. She continued researching in the area of tourism management, particularly as it relates to backpacker tourism. More recently Lee has moved to a teaching focused position and uses her previous experience to enhance her teaching at both undergraduate and masters levels.
