Find an expert

I am a linguist whose research interests include: interactions between discourse, cognition and grammar, pragmatics, perspective-taking in discourse, Conversation Analysis, typology, narrative structure, language shift and language maintenance, Australian First Nations Languages.

I am currently a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project 'Conversational interaction in Aboriginal and Remote Australia' (CIARA - https://www.ciaraproject.com).

Author of:

• Articles on interactions between discourse and grammar in Garrwa and other Australian First Nations Languages, including A Grammar of (Western) Garrwa. Mouton De Gruyter. 2012
• Publications on epistemics and evidential pragmatics, including Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance: Narrative Retelling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2001
• Publications on Aboriginal English in Queensland Aboriginal Communities
• Publications on classroom interaction in Early Years and First Nations schooling.

Editor of:

• Interactional Linguistics (Journal co-edited with Prof. Simona Pekarek Doehler, https://benjamins.com/catalog/il)
• Discourse and Grammar in Australian Languages (With Brett Baker, Amsterdam: John Benjamins 2008)
• Indigenous Language and Social Identity (With Brett Baker, Mark Harvey and Rod Gardner, Canberra:Pacific Linguistics, 2011)

Dr Yuriko Nagata’s research interests include: Japanese diaspora in Australia and Pacific, and culture in Japanese language studies.

Her current research projects include:

• Cultural and social diversity in Japanese language material
• The Japanese community of Torres Strait
• The Japanese Diaspora in Australia: Gendered perspective

She was a member of the Conference Organising

Kylie (Anderson) Navuku is a teaching-practice focused academic, teaching primarily in Communication (undergraduate and postgraduate) and Journalism (undergraduate). Her teaching schedule in 2026 includes: Public Interest Communication; Communication Theory; Communication Management and Leadership; and Intercultural Communication.

Kylie's teaching is both practice and research informed. As a communication practitioner, Kylie has worked with non-government, government, and inter-governmental stakeholders contributing to campaigns/ initiatives with the purpose of raising awareness and furthering public education on various themes (including conservation, climate change, and civic education). Recent areas of exploration are the challenges for island-based artists engaged in environmental communication and the ways in which individuals can use visual arts to promote environmental messages outside of organisational/ institutional partnerships. Since 2024 Kylie has been engaged in a collaborative project investigating ways to communicate bioeconomy. Kylie's research interest is at the intersection of communication (including media/journalism) and politics. Most recently her research has focused on climate change and international ocean journalism.

In addition to a PhD from UQ, Kylie has a MA (IntRel)(Res) [Master of Arts (International Relations) by Research] and a BIntSt (Hons) [Bachelor of International Studies (Honours)] from Flinders University.

Other university employment includes the University of the South Pacific (USP) and Flinders University of South Australia. At USP, Kylie was based at Laucala Campus in Fiji but her role also took her to the campuses and centres in Majuro (Marshall Islands), Honiara (Solomon Islands), Nuku'alofa (Tonga), Alafua (Apia, Samoa), and Rarotonga (Cook Islands). At Flinders, Kylie was based at the Bedford Park Campus, while at UQ she is based at St Lucia campus in Queensland.

Dr Giselle Newton (she/her) is a digital health sociologist at the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies and a Research Fellow on the Australian Ad Observatory in the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Giselle's research focuses on how commercial digital platforms shape individuals' experiences of family and intimate life. Giselle has led projects considering how reproductive and genetic technologies shape personal life and family relationships, for example on donor-conceived people's use of digital technologies, direct-to-consumer DNA testing and digital advertising of fertility treatments and services. Giselle has developed and applied ethical participatory, creative and digital methods in social research. She is experienced working in interdisciplinary teams developing and employing digital tools and observatories to better understand individuals' (often unobservable and ephemeral) digital social worlds. Giselle has published in Sociology, Human Reproduction, New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Sociology of Health & Illness. Giselle was awarded the Early Career International Visiting Fellowship, University of Sheffield for 2024-25. In 2025, she was a keynote speaker at the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference in Adelaide. Giselle has been an invited speaker in Japan (Donor Link Japan) and Denmark (LGBT+ Danmark).

Current projects:

-Ethical, social and regulatory implications of informal sperm donation, ARC Discovery Project

-Targeted digital advertising in fertility, reproduction and parenting, the Australian Ad Observatory

-Technologies of the Body: Women, Visibility and Museum Collections

Past projects:

-Engaging consumers to work towards social license for implementation of AI in healthcare

-Understanding stakeholders’ perspectives on public inquiries in sexual and reproductive health

-DNA datascapes: how individuals seek information about family via direct-to-consumer DNA testing

-How alcohol and gambling companies target people most at risk with marketing for addictive products on social media, using the Australian Mobile Ad Toolkit (contract research project commissioned by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education Limited, with Prof Nic Carah and Lauren Hayden)

-On target: Understanding advertising in the fertility sector with data from the Australian Ad Observatory 1.0, a winter research collaboration (with Romy Wilson Gray and Maria Proctor).

-Everyday belongings: how Australian donor-conceived adults’ use digital technologies to bond, sleuth, educate and strategise. Giselle's PhD study won Dean’s Award for Outstanding PhD Theses in 2022.

-Understanding care endings: Sociological and educational approaches to support pathways out of caring Research supervision and development

Current students:

-Lauren Hayden(PhD candidate, Communications and Arts, UQ) - Digital advertising and cultures of alcohol consumption on social media platforms (with Prof Nicholas Carah, Prof Dan Angus) (2022-2026)

-Quita Olsen (PhD candidate, Queensland Digital Health Centre, UQ) - Developing an Inclusive Framework and Communication Strategy towards the Public’s Willingness to Share Health Data for Secondary Purposes (with Prof Jason Pole, Dr Leanna Woods, Dr Amalie Dyda) (2025-2028)

-Juan Ospina Deaza (PhD candidate, Communications and Arts, UQ) How digital platforms shape experiences of male (in)fertility/parenthood (with Dr Giang Nyugen-Thu) (2026-2029)

-Sai Tang (PhD candidate, Communications and Arts, UQ) How digital technologies shape intergenerational care: An investigation of the Chinese “Lao Er Dai” and Chinese families (with Dr Giang Nyugen-Thu) (2026-2029)

-Gabrielle Cournoyer (Master of Genetic Counselling, UTS) Understanding patients’ perspectives of reproductive genetic carrier screening (RGCS) in donor conception in Australia (2026-2027)

-Rishika Chattopadhyay (Master of Genomic and Health, The University of Melbourne) How Australian IVF clinics promote genetic testing services (2026-2027)

Past students:

-Adriana Saab (Master of Genetic Counselling, UTS) - Understanding targeted advertising of reproductive genetic technologies (with Julia Mansour and Dr Lisa Dive)

-Phoebe Price-Barker (Honours, Criminology, UQ) - Assessing cyber vulnerabilities in direct-to-consumer genetic testing platforms (with Dr Caitlin Curtis) (2025)

-Simone Sanders (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Representations of breast cancer predisposition testing on TikTok: a qualitative analysis (with Julia Mansour and Dr Lisa Dive)

-Lina Choi (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Unpacking Narratives about Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing in TikTok Videos: A Thematic Analysis (with Julia Mansour and Dr Lisa Dive)

-Cushla McKinney (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - The impact of direct-to-consumer DNA testing on genetic counselling practice (with Dr Lisa Dive, A/Prof Aideen McInerny-Leo, Dr Vaishnavi Nathan).

-Diya Dilip Porwal (Master of Genetic Counselling student, UTS) - Experiences of carrier screening and genetic testing in gamete donors (with Julia Mansour and Dr Lisa Dive).

Areas of supervision:

Giselle welcomes research proposals focused on social research in digital identities and cultures; family relationships and practices; DNA and genetic testing/screening; reproductive health issues including endometriosis and menopause; assisted reproduction. Giselle is a member of the School of Communication and Arts HDR Committee. Teaching Giselle has coordinated and lectured across undergraduate and postgraduate programs in courses in humanities, social sciences and health. She has delivered guest lectures to students of Masters of Public Health on 'Digital Methods' and to Master of Diagnostic Genomics on 'Direct-to-consumer genetic testing’. She was course coordinator for COMU2030 Communication Research Methods in 2023, lecturer in HHSS6000 HASS Honours Research Design in 2024 and HHSS6040 Honours Research Design in Arts and Culture in 2025 and will continue in 2026.

Jenna Ng is a multi-award-winning researcher studying digital media culture, with particular research interests in digital visual culture; creative technologies; AI and algorithmic culture and interactive storytelling. Currently Head of the School of Communication and Arts, she also leads strategic direction, leadership and management of a multi-disciplinary department of over 80 academic staff across art history, drama, journalism, communications, film and television, digital media culture, literature and creative and professional writing.

Ng's publications include the books Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013), a "Highly Recommended" CHOICE title, and The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (Amsterdam University Press, 2021), which won an Honourable Mention by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

Working across a range of media, Ng also produces innovative creative research outputs with practice-based methodologies. She has produced a second screen installation for theatre performance; multimedia scholarship; video essays; and online open-access collaborative initiatives. Her latest project, a creative research website titled "The New Virtuality" (thenewvirtuality.com), won the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis and the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MECCSA) Practice-Based Research of the Year award, with its video essay winning the Learning on Screen Special Jury Prize (while nominated in the category of "Creative Reuse") and had its debut screening at the InScience Film Festival 2025 in LUX Nijmegen.

Dr. Mehwish Nisar is a medical doctor, researcher, and academic (FHEA) whose work spans clinical practice, public health research, and higher education. Her research expertise lies in mixed-methods investigations of chronic diseases and their complications. She is especially focused on promoting appropriate and equitable healthcare access among diverse and underserved populations.

Currently serving as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, she spearheads initiatives that integrate mixed-methods research, co-design principles, implementation science, and consumer and community involvement in research to enhance health outcomes for CALD communities living with hearing loss. She is a committee member of the IH SIG, Public Health Australia.

As an Academic at UQ, Dr. Nisar leverages more than ten years of teaching experience gained across medical schools and tertiary institutions in Australia and internationally. Her dedication to high-quality university education is formally acknowledged through her recognition as an Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

Central to Dr. Nisar's professional mission is the pursuit of health equity through culturally responsive, evidence-informed strategies. She offers comprehensive skills in research methodology, qualitative and quantitative analysis, knowledge translation, and fostering collaborative relationships with community-based organisations.

Maggie Nolan is an Associate Professor in Digital Cultural Heritage in the School of Communication and Arts and the recently appointed Director of AustLit. AustLit is a comprehensive information resource and research environment for Australian literary, print, and narrative culture and it supports and promotes research into Australian story-telling.

Maggie values interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to humanities research.

Maggie's research is in the broad field of Australian Literary Cultures. Her most recent project, "Close Relations: Irishness in Australian Literature", with Professor Ronan McDonald (UoM) and Professor Kath Bode (ANU) was awarded an ARC Discovery Grant in 2022.

Her research interests include:

• Contemporary Indigenous Literatures
• Hoaxes, Imposture and Mistaken Identity in Australian Literary Culture
• Reading, reception and the civic role of book clubs
• Digital literary studies
• Value in literary studies and the impact of ranking systems on the discipline.

Maggie is an experienced postgraduate supervisor and is available to supervise topics on Australian literary cultures. She also welcomes students and researcher who would like to work on projects linked to AustLit.

Dr Rob Pensalfini received his PhD in theoretical linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997, with research based on his fieldwork in the Barkly Tableland of Australia's Northern Territory. He then worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago for two years prior to commencing as a Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Queensland in 1999. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and Drama in 2003, and to Associate Professor in 2016. He has published several books and numerous articles in both linguistics and drama, including ground-breaking work on the performance of Shakespeare in prisons. He leads Australia's only ongoing Prison Shakespeare program and is the Artistic Director of the Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble.

I am a part-time teaching associate and lecturer in the School of Education and coordinate undergraduate and postgraduate courses in teacher development, languages, literacy and Arts education. My research explores professional learning and classroom-based research,with a particular focus on English pronunciation teaching and literacy development. I have also taught in Queensland primary and high schools, academic English programs and federally-funded adult migrant English teaching programs.

Annie Pohlman is an Associate Professor in Indonesian Studies at The School of Languages and Cultures, St Lucia campus, UQ. Her research interests include Indonesian history and politics, comparative genocide studies, torture, gendered experiences of violence, and testimony studies. She also works with human rights NGOs in Indonesia on the documentation of human rights abuses.

I’m a researcher and lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. My expertise is in critically evaluating how people and organisations use language to communicate about themselves and shape the world around them. I’m committed to doing research that promotes justice and equity, and helps government, the media, and industry communicate for the common good.

My recent research has explored sustainability in the arts and culture sector, news reporting on violence against women and girls, and COVID-19 crisis communication.

I’ve recently collaborated with various peak bodies in the Australian arts and culture sector such as Theatre Network Australia, and arts companies of various sizes (e.g., Queensland Ballet and La Boite Theatre) to develop a free peer coaching program known as “Creating out Loud.” This program builds networks of mutual support for artists and arts workers across all levels of the arts and culture sector.

Enriching the arts and culture sector is of high importance to me. In 2021, I was awarded an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to support arts workers recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

To find out how I can help your organisation, email me at k.power@business.uq.edu.au. You can also follow me on LinkedIn.

Sol's research interests include: (Critical) Discourse Analysis, Trauma and Memory Studies, Perceived Discrimination, Critical Translation Studies, Decolonial Thought.

Sol is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland in Australia. She teaches language, literature, and cultural studies courses. Sol’s research interests include memory and trauma studies, everyday discourses of discrimination, and Decolonial Thought. Sol has over 50 publications, including four books, one co-edited book, and five books as a translator. Her work has appeared in journals such as Social Semiotics, Critical Discourse Studies, Memory Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Languages in Contrast, Babel, Delaware Review of Latin American Studies, and JILAR among others. Her co-authored historical Graphic Memoir Historias Clandestinas (2014) had a second edition in 2023 and is currently being made into a film. The English version of the graphic novel was published in 2023 in the U.S.

Melanie Saward is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman. She is a lecturer of Australian Studies in the School of Communication and Arts and has recently (July 2024) been appointed as the coordinator of BlackWords. Her research looks at Indigeneity in romantic comedy fiction with a focus on diversity, intersectionality, and the Australian publishing industry.

Melanie is a writer and editor. Her debut fiction book, Burn, was published in 2023 with Affirm press and her first romantic comedy novel, Love Unleashed, was published in August 2024.

I'm a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Queensland, where I use computational methods and large text and speech corpora to study how English is actually used — in everyday conversation, across social groups, and by learners.

My research focuses on features that traditional grammars overlook but that shape real communication: discourse markers (like, you know), general extenders, terms of address, vulgarity, and adjective amplification. I also work in corpus phonetics, particularly vowel production and voice-onset timing in first- and second-language English speakers.

Alongside my research, I hold several roles focused on language research infrastructure:

• Director of Research, School of Languages and Cultures, UQ
• Director of the Language Technology and Data Analysis Laboratory (LADAL), a free open-access hub for language data science (https://ladal.edu.au/)
• Chief Investigator on the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA), a national research infrastructure project (https://www.ldaca.edu.au/)

I'm also an advocate for reproducibility and open science in the humanities and social sciences, and I develop tools and workflows that make text and speech analysis more transparent and rigorous.

Research areas: applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, sociolinguistics, language variation and change, learner corpus research, corpus pragmatics, reproducibility, digital humanities.

Dr Laura Simpson Reeves is a Research Fellow in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work at The University of Queensland. Her program of research explores how structural and cultural forces shape experiences of inequality and disadvantage, working at the intersection of culture, community, and care. Her work seeks to contribute to positive outcomes for children and families through strengthening evidence-based practice.

Laura's research is grounded in a deep commitment to social justice, equity, and inclusion, with a strong interdisciplinary focus that spans sociology, community and international development, communication studies, and social work. Her work is characterised by applied, impact-driven practice and methodological rigor, especially in qualitative and visual/arts-based methods, with a sustained focus on vulnerable and marginalised populations. She is passionate about translating research into practice and amplifying voices of those with lived/living experience.

In addition to her research, Laura is passionate about creating safe and inclusive spaces in which research and teaching can be grounded and learning shared. She has a strong history of service and mentoring with students and early career academics, especially those returning to study or coming from non-traditional or marginalised backgrounds.

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.

Currently, I'm working on a research project entitled Family talk in multilingual Australia (AusFamTalk): for more details, see my Research on a Page.

I am Associate Editor in the Journal of Pragmatics, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Mouton Series in Pragmatics (MSP), an Editorial Board member in Advances in (Im)politeness Studies (book series, Springer) and a member of the IPrA Consultation Board.

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've always loved languages, maybe because I've always been surrounded by a variety of them. I grew up speaking Lithuanian (lietuvių) and Russian (русский). Then 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)!

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Programme contribution (current)

Convenor of Master of Applied Linguistics programme

Convenor of Discourse Discussion Group (DDG): Data analysis sessions and Pragmatics & Interaction reading group

• 2026: Fridays, 2 pm - 4 pm & 4 pm - 6 pm;
• Interested in joining or would like to find out more? Fill in the EoI form or contact me via email.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Course contribution/Teaching areas:

UQ (undergraduate):

• Digital Discourse and Social Media (SLAT3030)

UQ (postgraduate):

• Language, Culture and Communication (SLAT7899)
• Structure of Language (SLAT7705)

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Supervision (MA & PhD):

PhD (current)

• 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): The pragmatics of caring: Relating practices in Chinese-speaking families

PhD (completed)

• (2026) Chantima Wangsomchok (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Conversational humour in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) workplaces
• (2026) Andrea Rodriguez (principal supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Relational accountability: Insights from categorial work in accounting practices (Transnational family talk in Spanish)
• (2025) Nicholas Hugman (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh): Towards a (micro)theory of conversational humour: The interactional accomplishment of incongruity
• (2023) Amir Sheikhan (associate supervisor; with Prof Michael Haugh and Dr Wei-Lin Melody Chang): Conversational humour in intercultural initial interactions in English

MA (completed)

• (2026) Danie Wang: “I learned it by myself”: Categories and category relations in parent–young dhild pedagogical sequences
• (2025) Sidonie Evans: “That’s what being a dad’s all about”: The construction of the father category and fatherhood in male advice podcasts
• (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

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Forthcoming publications:

Journal articles

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Andrea Rodriguez (under review). The everyday morality of doing ‘being a couple’: Pragmatic and categorial insights into caring in (transnational) family interactions

Edited volume

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria, Andrea Rodriguez and Zhiyi Liu (eds). (under contract). Relating, normativity and culture-in-action in family interaction: 'Doing family’ across languages and spaces. Routledge

​​​________________________________________________________________________________________________

Projects (current):

• 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)

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Forthcoming conference panels/presentations/talks:

• June 27-June 2 2027: Panel: The pragmatics of doing ‘being siblings’ in talk-in-interaction at IPrA2027, Helsinki, Finland
• June 27-June 2 2027: Panel co-organised with Zhiyi Liu and Andrea Rodriguez: The pragmatics of ‘doing family’ in everyday life at IPrA2027, Helsinki, Finland

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Edited special issues/volumes:

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Andrea Rodriguez (eds). (2026). Rules of engagement: Relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse. Discourse Studies 28(4). https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/disa/28/4
• 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

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Panel organisation (since 2020):

• 23-29 June 2026 (with Zhiyi Liu and Andrea Rodriguez) - ‘Doing family’ in talk-in-interaction: Diversity across languages, at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis (ICCA2026), Edmonton, Canada
• 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

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Invited research talks/lectures (since 2020):

• 12 September 2025 - A pragmatic and categorial analysis of a sibling dispute. Talk at Research Seminar Series at Western Sydney University
• 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

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Community workshops

• 30 September 2025 - Peer-review training for PhD and ECRs (UQ Graduate School)
• 2 September 2025 - Workshop on cultural competency (invited by UQ Vice-Chancellor Scholars Enrichment Program)
• 16 October 2024 - Intercultural conversations: Am I being nice or rude? (invited by Student Affairs Division, UQ)
• 21 March 2024 - Harmony in conversation (invited by Mental Health Champions Network, UQ)
• 28 August 2023 - Intercultural conversations: How (not) to handle a conversation (invited by Multicultural Queensland Month)

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Journal Referee

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

Teacher Education

Dr. Simone Smala is a senior lecturer in teacher education, educational psychology and multilingualism in education. Drawing from a background as a middle years and secondary teacher, Simone now focuses her research on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in bilingual, immersion and TESOL settings, and the emerging world of Generative AI in K-12 education. Simone's research is based in socio-cultural learning theories, educational policy and blended learning.She publishes in both English and German and has extensive research connections in Europe and the USA.

Dr. Manu P. Sobti is a landscape historian and urban interlocutor of the Global South with research specialisations in South Asia, South East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Within the gamut of the Global, the Islamic, and the Non-Western, his continuing work examines borderland transgressions and their intertwinement with human mobilities, indigeneities, and the narratives of passage across these liminal sites. From his perspective, ‘land-centered’ and ‘deep’ place histories replete with human actors serve as critical and de-colonizing processes that negate the top-down master-narratives wherein borders and boundaries simplistically delineate nation states and their scalar range of internal geographies. He was previously Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA (2006-16). He has a B.Dipl.Arch. from the School of Architecture-CEPT (Ahmedabad - INDIA), an SMarchS. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge - USA), and a Ph.D. from the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta - USA).

As a recognized scholar and innovative educator, Sobti served as Director of SARUP-UWM’s India Winterim Program (2008-15). This foreign study program worked intensively with local architecture schools in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Chandigarh, allowing students and faculty to interact actively, often within the gamut of the same project. He also set up a similar, research-focused program in Uzbekistan, engaging advanced undergraduate and graduate students to undertake field research at sites, archives and cultural landscapes. In partnership with the Art History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SARUP colleagues, Sobti also co-coordinated the Building-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Concentration of SARUP-UWM’s Doctoral Program (2011-13), creating opportunities for student research in diverse areas of architectural and urban history and in multiple global settings. He served as the Chair of SARUP's PhD Committee between 2014-16, leading an area of BLC's research consortium titled Urban Histories and Contested Geographies.

Sobti's research has been supported by multiple funding bodies, including the Graham Foundation of the Arts (USA), the Architectural Association (UK), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (USA), the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (UZBEKISTAN), the US Department of State Fulbright Foundation (USA), the Aga Khan Foundation (SWITZERLAND), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (USA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the Centre for 21st Century Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), the Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), Stanford University (USA), in addition to city governments in New Delhi/Chandigarh/Ahmedabad (INDIA), Samarqand/Bukhara (UZBEKISTAN), Erzurum (TURKEY) and New Orleans (USA). He has also served as a United States Department of State Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar and received 7 Research Fellowships at important institutions worldwide. He is a nominated Expert Member of the ICOMOS-ICIP (Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites) International Committee, responsible for debate and stewardship on contentious cultural heritage issues globally.

Elizabeth Stephens is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication and Arts. She was previously an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (UQ, 2017-2021), Associate Dean Research at Southern Cross University (2014-2017), and an ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses (UQ, 2010-2014). Her background is in gender and sexuality studies, and her current research focuses on three interconnected themes:

• popular histories and representations of science, medicine and technology
• collaborations between the arts and sciences
• the critical medical humanities

A new research project examines the history and culture of work, productivity and fatigue. Elizabeth is author of over 100 publications, including four books: Artificial Life: The Art of Automating Living Systems (University of Western Australia Press, 2025), co-authored with Oron Catts, Sarah Collins, and Ionat Zurr, A Critical Genealogy of Normality (University of Chicago Press, 2017), co-authored with Peter Cryle; Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body from 1700 to the Present (Liverpool University Press, 2011), and Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's Fiction (Palgrave 2009).

She welcomes inquiries from potential PhD students, and can offer supervision in the following areas:

• cultural studies of science, medicine and/or technology
• art/science collaboration
• medical humanities
• digital cultures
• gender and sexuality studies