School of Languages and Cultures HDR Symposium 2026
HDR and Beyond: Sharing, Connecting and Celebrating
Date: Friday 17 July 2026
Time: 8:30am to 5pm (to be confirmed)
Venue: Sir Llew Edwards Building, Rooms 116 and 132, The University of Queensland, Saint Lucia Campus
Call for abstracts and event registrations will open in February 2026.
Welcome from Symposium Organising Committee
Welcome to SLC HDR Symposium 2026. This year’s theme “HDR and Beyond: Sharing, Connecting and Celebrating” highlights how our HDR journeys extend beyond research, connecting us within the academia, the industry and the wider community.
To accommodate HDR students who were unable to attend the symposium in February 2025 due to family commitments, the next symposium will be held in July 2026, so please save the date.
The SLC HDR Symposium is a space to share ideas, foster connections, and celebrate the achievements of our HDR community. We also welcome HDR students from other schools within the HASS faculty. The symposium features a range of activities, including workshops, panel discussions, and paper presentations. SLC HDR students with their progress review due in RQ3 2026 are highly encouraged to present in the symposium. We hope this event sparks meaningful conversations, inspires new collaborations, and offers new perspectives that continue to shape both our research and personal growth.
We look forward to having you join us in celebrating the creativity and diversity of our HDR community.
Message from the SLC Director of Higher Degree by Research
Welcome to the 2026 School of Languages and Cultures HDR Symposium. I’m delighted that we now hold this exciting event annually, following the great success in 2025. The 2026 symposium with the theme “HDR and Beyond: Sharing, Connecting and Celebrating” would be the culmination of endless effort and endeavour of our HDR students to achieve their personal goals and a wonderful place to share your stories. With the new enthusiastic and dedicated committee members, I would like to warmly welcome students from other Schools and Faculties as well.
Dr Kayoko Hashimoto, SLC Director of HDR
Dr Kayoko Hashimoto is the Director of Higher Degree of Research and Senior Lecturer at School of Languages and Cultures. Her main research area is language policy with particular interest in construction of national and individual identities in fluid multicultural and multilingual contexts. She has been actively involved in national and international research and teaching collaborations in Australia, Japan, Vietnam, UK and Poland – a visiting fellow at Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo, Japan in 2024-2025 and an Erasmus+ mobility program scholar at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland in 2025.
Organising Committee
Aisha Aslam
Aisha is a PhD student exploring how novice researchers disseminate their complex research to a broader, non-specialist audience in three-minute thesis presentation. Her research interests are in Corpus Linguistics, EAP, TESOL, and using GenAI in language teaching.
Chilmeg Elden
Chilmeg Elden is a second year PhD student investigating the interpersonal relationships between Australian and Japanese language exchange partners. Her research interests lie in the field of pragmatics, particularly in language use in social interaction.
Franciele Spinelli (Fran)
Fran is a third-year PhD student investigating the role of AI in supporting the academic English needs of international students in higher education. More broadly, her research brings together second language acquisition, multilingualism, blended learning and the evolving role of AI in education.
Topan Iman
Topan Iman is a second-year PhD student examining naturally occurring conversations in Indonesian. Specifically, his study investigates the causes of overlapping talk, how speakers orient to these overlaps, and how they are resolved in interaction.
Zhiyi Liu (Liz)
Zhiyi Liu is in her third year of PhD study, exploring emic practices and conceptualisations of relating and emotion in Chinese family discourse. Her research interests lie in the field of pragmatics, with a focus on studying family talk, relationship shaping, and identity construction.