School of Languages and Cultures

2025 Winter Research Program

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Engage in a formal research project over the winter break 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.

Each project will be offered for a period of four (4) weeks between 30 June to 25 July 2025

Successful applicants will receive a $2,000 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 will open on 24 March.

Check out some testimonials from previous scholars.

  1. Conflict Narratives Symposium and Workshop support
  2. ‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse
  3. Data Analysis in Korean language learners/speakers’ experiences
  1. Exploring the language journeys of high school graduates: A study on Japanese learning backgrounds
  2. Compiling and repurposing descriptions of Gunya for Community Language Revitalisation
  3. Professional conference interpreters’ use of interpreting strategies in real-life Chinese/English simultaneous interpreting at the United Nations

2. ‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse

Project title: 

‘Talking families into being’: Exploring family discourse

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

Duration of the project: 4 weeks (30 June – 25 July 2025)

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 audio- and video-recorded everyday-life conversations between parents, parent(s)-child(ren) and siblings in various 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;
  • Creating literature database;
  • 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:

 

  • 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 are interested in doing research (Honours or MA thesis);
  • 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.