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

10. Up next for Djambarrpuyŋu texts: Creating a digital corpus of Djambarrpuyŋu from legacy materials

Project title: 

Up next for Djambarrpuyŋu texts: Creating a digital corpus of Djambarrpuyŋu from legacy materials

 

Hours of engagement & delivery mode

The project will run from 12 January to 20 February, 25-30 hours per week with regular meetings, some in hybrid delivery, some on-campus. There is scope for on-campus or remote work.

 

Description:

Djambarrpuyŋu is a Yolŋu language spoken in Arnhem Land, and is the most widely spoken traditional First Nations language in Australia. A large grammar of Djambarrpuyŋu was written by Melanie Wilkinson for her PhD thesis (1991, published 2012).

 

In this project, we will work to create a digital corpus of Djambarrpuyŋu by connecting audio with handwritten text and glosses, originally recorded and transcribed by Melanie Wilkinson in the 1980s with Yolŋu in Galiwin’ku. There is ~20 hours of audio, which we will work through in a prioritised order in consultation with Melanie Wilkinson and families of recorded speakers. We will use Optical Character Recognition techniques to create digitised transcriptions of texts and Elan to align the text with the audio. This project has permission from the families of the people recorded.

 

Expected learning outcomes and deliverables:

Scholars will gain data preparation and analysis skills by engaging with original audio and textual data using current technologies and methods. Collaborative research outputs to be negotiated.

 

Suitable for:

This project is suited to students with a good knowledge of linguistics (2nd-3rd year, Honours), and an interest in Australia’s Indigenous Languages.

 

Primary Supervisor:

 

Dr Kathleen Jepson

 

Further info:

Dr Kathleen Jepson k.jepson@uq.edu.au