School of Languages and Cultures

2023 Winter Research Program

Engage in a formal research project over the summer semester with the UQ Summer Research Program.

The UQ Winter Research Scholarship Program offers scholarships to students wishing to gain experience working alongside a researcher in a formal research environment in their area of interest at UQ.

Applications have closed

Each project will be offered for a period of four (4) weeks between Monday 26 June – Friday 21 July 2023.

Participation is open to undergraduate (including honours) and master by coursework students who are currently enrolled and will remain at UQ for the entirety of the research program.

Discover more about the Winter Research Program

  1. Memory discourses in letters to women who were executed and disappeared in Chile.
  2. How accurate is professional Mandarin/English interpreters' real-life telephone interpretations?
  3. Translating Testimony from Survivors of Enforced Disappearances in the Algerian War
  4. Multimodal public health communication
  5. Eye tracking in bilingualism research with less-commonly researched languages.
  6. Potential impact of learner background factors on their communication in a second language - Part 2
  1. Language use and story structure: Analysis of stories told by Russian-English bilingual children
  2. Socio-pragmatic understanding of (im)politeness in Korean discourse
  3. ChatGPT for schools – Curating a prompt taxonomy for AI in F-10 Education.
  4. Border-Crossing Australian and Japanese Literature: Literary Exchange as Cultural Diplomacy
  5. Empowering Asian language speakers to become language teachers in Australian schools

1. Memory discourses in letters to women who were executed and disappeared in Chile.

Project title: 

Memory discourses in letters to women who were executed and disappeared in Chile.

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

4 weeks between Monday 26 June – Friday 21 July 2023 with an expected engagement over this time of 24-30 hours per week.

Hybrid arrangement: Students will meet in person with their supervisor once a week for 2 hours. They will also engage in Zoom and email contact throughout the week as needed.

Description:

In 2020, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Chile started the digital project Epistolario de la memoria, which collects letters to victims of the civic-military dictatorship that ruled the country between 1973 and 1990. The 2020 epistolary consisted of 34 letters from grandchildren to their grandparents who were made to disappear or had been executed. The 2021 collection comprised 27 letters from women (relatives or otherwise) to 19 disappeared or executed women victims of the dictatorship.

This WRP consists of producing the annotated translation (Spanish to English) of the 2021 Epistolario de la memoria corpus. The translations will be annotated, and the scholars will have to identify and code recurrent themes in the letters. Scholars will read and discuss key research articles in the area of Trauma and Memory Studies to inform their work.

This project is part of a study that examines memory and postmemory discourses after historical traumatic events have taken place in a country. The translated corpus will be used in a future publication that will analyse the letters’ aims, commonalities, and how memory and postmemory manifest in their discourse. The project covers the fields of Translation Studies, Trauma and Memory Studies and Discourse Studies.

Keywords: annotated translation, theme coding, discourse, postmemory, history, trauma, testimony

Expected outcomes and deliverables:

Scholars will apply their skills in translation techniques (Spanish to English) acquired in Spanish translation course SPAN3310 or elsewhere. They will produce an annotated translation and will identify and code themes for research in discourse studies. They will learn about the topic of traumatic memory and postmemory within the area of Trauma and Memory Studies; and will learn basic discourse analysis skills. Related academic articles will be discussed in each meeting.

Scholars will be expected to:

  • complete the annotated translation of the 27 letters (corpus divided in two if there are two scholars) and provide a basic theme coding of each letter.
  • send an annotated translation of 5 letters weekly, at least 3 days before scheduled meeting.
  • meet in person for two hours every week with their supervisor to discuss the translations and the concepts related to the topics of memory, trauma and discourse.
  • prepare tables with demographic information that can be deduced from the letters.
  • come prepared to summarise and discuss assigned weekly articles in the meetings.

Suitable for:

Undergraduate (or graduate) students majoring in Spanish, having done SPAN3310 or most SPAN3XXX level course, thinking about continuing academic career (Honours).

Primary Supervisor:

Sol Rojas-Lizana

Further info:

I do not wish to be contacted by students prior to submitting their application but they can contact me via email if they need further information: i.rojaslizana@uq.edu.au