School of Languages and Cultures

2026 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 12 January to 20 February 2026.

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.

Apply now

Applications will close 12 October 2025.

Check out some testimonials from previous scholars.

  1. Testimonies of torture in Indonesia
  2. Using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to explore family discourse
  3. More than Frills and Ribbons: Translating Essays on Japanese Children’s Literature
  4. Dingo Lingo – Building a database of Indigenous words for ‘dingo’
  5. Discourse analysis of regional dialects in Korean: Preserving cultural identities
  6. Health risk and benefit communication
  1. Professional conference interpreters’ use of interpreting strategies in real-life Chinese/English simultaneous interpreting at the United Nations
  2. A review of interactional competence amongst vulnerable university students
  3. Drawing language in action: Stimuli development for language experiments
  4. Up next for Djambarrpuyŋu texts: Creating a digital corpus of Djambarrpuyŋu from legacy materials
  5. Building Indigenous languages dictionaries and learning resources

2. Using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to explore family discourse

Project title: 

Using Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) to explore family discourse

 

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

Duration of the project: 6 weeks (12 January – 20 February 2026)

Hours of engagement: 36hrs 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 focusses on Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) as an analytical and methodological framework to analyse social interaction, more specifically, family interactions. With a close attention being paid to a detailed analysis of verbal and embodied behaviours, it 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.

Expected learning outcomes and deliverables:

The skills the scholars will gain include:

  • Membership categorisation analysis (MCA) 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 (e.g. having completed
    SLAT3030, SLAT7810, SLAT7899 or equivalent);
  • 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.