School of Languages and Cultures

2025 Summer Research Program

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

The UQ Summer 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.

Each project will be offered for a period of six (6) weeks between 13 January to 21 February 2025

Successful applicants will receive a $3,000 grant.

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.

Applications have now closed.

Check out some testimonials from previous scholars.

 

 

  1. Discourse analysis of regional dialects in Korean: Preserving cultural identities
  2. Los latidos de la memoria (The heartbeat of memory): Memory and postmemory in microbiographies of victims of Chilean state terrorism.
  3. Crisis communication in public health
  4. Testimonies of enforced disappearances and torture from Aceh, Indonesia (1976–2005)
  5. The investigation of environmental discourse and ruling ideologies in the school textbooks in North and South.
  1. ‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse in Australia
  2. More than Frills and Ribbons: Japanese Children’s Literature
  3. Potential impact of learner background factors on their communication in a second language - Part 5
  4. Computational Approaches To Complement Conversation Analysis
  5. Role of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors in the development of narrative skills in Russian-English bilingual children

6. ‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse in Australia

Project title: 

‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse in Australia

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

Duration of the project: 4 weeks (January 13 – February 7)

 

Hours of engagement: 30hrs per week

 

Applicants will be required to be on campus for regular meetings, data sessions and project discussions, while some other activities can be done off campus.

Description:

This project explores video-recorded everyday-life conversations between parents, parent(s)-child(ren) and siblings in Spanish-speaking and Russian-speaking families. The focus of the project is on how various pragmatic phenomena – norms, politeness, identity, power – are co-constructed and unfold in and through interaction. The key methodological approaches used in this project are interactional pragmatics and membership categorisation analysis (MCA), where a close attention is paid to a detailed analysis of verbal and embodied behaviours.

Expected learning outcomes and deliverables:

Scholars will gain skills in:

 

  • Interactional pragmatics and/or membership categorisation analysis methodology;
  • Academic articles’ synthesis;
  • Detailed data transcription;
  • Abstract writing;
  • Data analysis;
  • Findings’ presentation at the end of the project.

 

Scholars will have an opportunity to work alongside the supervisor and some of the supervisors’ PhD students as well as be involved in the data discussion sessions/reading group that are organised by the supervisor. All of the developed skills will be crucial for anyone who would like to do an Honours’ or Master’s thesis analysing social interaction or is planning to do a PhD.

Suitable for:

Given the specifics of the project, this opportunity is suitable for:

  • Speakers (native or near native) of Spanish or Russian;
  • 2nd-3rd -year undergraduate students or Master’s students that have some background in language and interaction, more broadly, or pragmatics, in particular;
  • Students who pay attention to detail and have good time management skills.

Primary Supervisor:

Dr Valeria Sinkeviciute

Further info:

Interested students are encouraged to contact Dr Valeria Sinkeviciute (v.sinkeviciute@uq.edu.au) prior to the application submission to discuss their interest in and eligibility to join the project.