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Karolina Mikołajewska-Zając is a Research Fellow in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the UQ Business School. Her research revolves around patterns of societal crises and their influence on entrepreneurship, the social dynamics of hype, and the systemic effects of digital platforms. Karolina's work uses ecological and systems thinking, emphasizing relationality and process.

Karolina obtained her PhD in Management and Organization Studies from Kozminski University in Warsaw, Poland. During her PhD, she held a 2-year visiting position at the University of California at Berkeley, where she conducted fieldwork tracing the organizational trajectory and ecosystemic effects of digital platforms focused on hospitality (Couchsurfing and Airbnb). Her research has been published in Organization Studies, European Journal of Social Theory, Internet Histories, and The Handbook of the Sharing Economy, among others. Karolina is a member of the editorial collective at ephemera. theory & politics in organization and a member of the steering committee at the International Sociological Association's Thematic Group 10 Digital Sociology.

Professor Moorhead works in late antique and early medieval history.

A graduate of the universities of New England and Liverpool, he is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has walked the medieval pilgrim trail from Le Puy to Santiago.

I am a cultural anthropologist with expertise in medical anthropology and critical global health. I have conducted extensive ethnographic research in Indonesia on health care, gendered violence, education, and racial stigma. My work in Papua/West Papua has tried to document and understand evolving forms of racism and violence, including how people resist and create change. Over the past 15 years I have worked with local Papuan and international research teams on studies of violence, older women's life stories, HIV/AIDS, hospital birth, and health vulnerabilities. My research aims to develop knowledge of the nuances and complexities of conditions and experiences in West Papua, while also working with Papuan scholars and community members to address pressing health and social problems.

I recently completed a study with Els Tieneke Rieke and Meki Wetipo on how urban Papuans understand and experience hospital childbirth, as part of an effort to understand dire maternal health in this location (2023, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology), published in a special issue on 'Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania', edited with Alexandra Widmer (York University, Canada). Another recent study funded by the Australian Research Council looked at vulnerabilities in Indonesia with Professor Lyn Parker (University of Western Australia) and others from the UK and Indonesia. The study used ethnography and surveys to develop a deeper, contextual understanding of who is vulnerable, how and why, and thus shed light on the concept of vulnerability and what it means. Recent publications look at education in gender inequality in Indonesia's frontier economy, older women’s narratives of economic agency and survivance (co-authored with Yohana Baransano), and the challenges faced by newlyweds.My article in Asian Studies Review, "West Papuan ‘Housewives’ with HIV: Gender, Marriage, and Inequality in Indonesia," was awarded the 2025 Wang Gungwu Prize by the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA).

Funded by the Australian Research Council, I am currently expanding my research on obstetrics and c-sections to understand the cultures and inequalities of maternity care in Indonesia, both in terms of local cultural needs and preferences, and in relation to the cultures of medicine and obstetrics that exist in hospitals and birth centres. This project is conducted with Dr Els Rieke (Universitas Papua), Associate Professor Najmah (Universitas Sriwijaya), and Dr Elan Lazuardi (Universitas Gadjah Mada). I also maintain ongoing collaborations with researchers at the National University of Singapore and Fiji National University, focused on maternity care.

I am an experienced PhD supervisor in medical anthropology and gender studies. I am interested in working with research students who wish to conduct anthropological research in Indonesia or the Pacific Islands. I teach undergraduate and postgraduate courses in medical anthropology (ANTH2250/7250), Pacific anthropology (ANTH2020) and gender (SOCY2050).

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

Dr Kylie (Anderson) Navuku has extensive experience in academic teaching and research. At University of Queensland (UQ) Kylie teaches in Communications and Journalism courses (undergraduate and postgraduate). Her research interests are at the intersection of politics, communications, and media/journalism with a focus on oceans, island countries, and the region of Oceania.

As a communication specialist, 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 and climate change). Her current research focus addresses ways in which journalism can contribute to this endeavour, focusing on the coverage of 'high level international events'. With experience in academic research and writing for scholarly publication, Kylie's communication practice has included writing for the media, visual arts, and creative writing. She is currently engaged in a creative-practice based project aimed at understanding how visual arts can assist in the dissemination of science and environmental messages.

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. 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 in South Australia, 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 has worked at UQ since 2023. Giselle is a Research Fellow on the Australian Ad Observatory in the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Giselle's research program is focused on individuals' experiences with digital, reproductive and genetic technologies, considering how these technologies shape personal and family life. Giselle is interested in methodological and ethical considerations, and participatory, creative and data donation methods in social research. She has experience working in interdisciplinary teams developing and employing digital tools, infrastructure and observatories to better understand individuals' (often unobservable and ephemeral) digital social worlds.

Giselle is a member of the Donor Conception Advisory Committee, a consultative body to the Victorian Department of Health. Giselle holds an appointment as Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, Sydney. Giselle is a co-convenor of the Australian Sociological Association Thematic Group on Families and Relationships. Giselle was awarded the Early Career International Visiting Fellowship, University of Sheffield for 2024-25.

Research

Current projects:

• Targeted digital advertising in fertility, reproduction and parenting, the Australian Ad Observatory
• 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
• Engaging consumers to work towards social license for implementation of AI in healthcare

Past projects:

• 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, 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

Current students:

• Lauren Hayden (PhD candidate, UQ) - Digital advertising and cultures of alcohol consumption on social media platforms (with Prof Nicholas Carah, Prof Dan Angus)
• Phoebe Price-Barker (Honours, Criminology, UQ) - Assessing cyber vulnerabilities in direct-to-consumer genetic testing platforms (with Dr Caitlin Curtis)

Past students:

• 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 and donation.

Teaching

Giselle has coordinated and lectured across undergraduate and postgraduate programs in courses in humanities, social sciences and health. 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.

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.

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.

Martin Schweinberger uses big data and computational methods to explore the messy, fascinating reality of how people actually talk—including all the swear words, filler words, and informal expressions that traditional language education overlooks. As a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Queensland, he bridges the gap between computer science and linguistics to understand how language evolves in our digital age.

Uncovering Hidden Language Patterns

Much of Martin's research focuses on the language phenomena that schools don't teach but that permeate everyday conversation. He analyzes massive datasets to study vulgarity and swearing patterns, as well as discourse markers—those ubiquitous filler words like "like," "you know," "well," and "I mean" that pepper our speech. By applying statistical methods to real-world language use, he reveals how these supposedly "incorrect" forms of expression actually follow sophisticated social and linguistic rules.

His work also tracks how language changes over time and varies between different social settings, using computational tools to identify patterns that would be impossible to detect through traditional research methods alone.

Building Australia's Language Data Future

As Director of the Language Technology and Data Analysis Laboratory (LADAL)—a free upskilling platform for language data science with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide—and a key figure in one of Australia's major research infrastructure projects, the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA), Martin is helping build the digital infrastructure that will support language research across the country. LDaCA has received substantial funding to create accessible tools and resources that allow researchers to analyze text and speech data more effectively.

Championing Research Transparency

Beyond his linguistic research, Martin advocates for reproducibility and transparency in humanities and social science research. He provides guidance on how language researchers can adopt more rigorous, open research practices—addressing a growing concern about the reliability of academic findings across disciplines.

Martin's international visibility is reflected in his leadership roles: he serves as Vice-President Professional of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) and sits on the board of The International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME), one of the oldest and most reputable societies for corpus linguistics. These positions demonstrate his commitment to advancing computational language research on a global scale.

Potential topics for supervision

I would be particularly interested in supervising theses on the following topics:

Sociolinguistics / Language Variation and Change / World Englishes

• General extenders
• Terms-of-address and salutations
• Discourse particles and markers
• Vulgarity
• Adjective amplification

Learner Language / Applied Linguistics / Corpus Phonetics / Learner Corpus Research

• Vowel production among L1 speakers and learners of English
• Voice-onset-times among L1 speakers and learners of English
• Fluency and pauses in learner and L1 speech.
• Accent and intelligibility / comprehension.

Text Analytics / Digital Humanities / Corpus Linguistics

• Applied word embedding applications in the language sciences.
• Comparison of different association / keyness measures

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.

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)!

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Programme contribution (current)

Convenor of Master of Applied Linguistics programme

Convenor of Discourse Discussion Group (DDG): Data analysis sessions and Membership categorisation analysis (MCA) reading group

• Fridays, 12 pm - 2 pm;
• Interested in joining or would like to find out more? Fill in the EoI form or contact me via email.

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Course contribution/Teaching areas:

UQ (undergraduate):

• Digital Discourse and Social Media (SLAT3030)

UQ (postgraduate):

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

Other/past:

• Communicating Across Cultures: Theory and Practice (COMU1002)
• Collaborations: Relating and Working Together (HUMN2500)
• Language Awareness & Cross-Cultural Competence for the Global Workplace (COMU2040)
• Independent Reading Course (SLAT7897)
• Dissertation (SLAT7853)
• English as a Second Language (Vilnius University)
• Academic English (reading, writing, presentations) (Vilnius University)
• Stylistics (Vilnius University)

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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): 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)

• (2025) Marlene Valdés Fuentes: tbc

MA (completed)

• (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

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Forthcoming publications:

Journal articles

Special Issues

• Sinkeviciute, Valeria and Andrea Rodriguez (eds). (2026 forthcoming). Rules of engagement: Relationships and socialisation practices in family discourse.

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Projects (current & past):

• 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)

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Forthcoming conference presentations/talks:

• June 22-27: Invoking ‘appropriate’ behaviour through categorial work in parent-child interaction, IPrA2025, Brisbane, Australia

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Edited special issues/volumes:

• 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

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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

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Panel organisation:

• 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

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Invited talks/lectures:

• 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

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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