Felicity Meakins

Professor
School of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Profile

I am the Deputy Director of the UQ node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language. I currently hold a Future Fellowship and an ARC DP which focus on language evolution and contact processes across northern Australia where I have worked for the past 19 years.

I studied at the University of Queensland between 1995-2001. Between 2001-04, I worked as a community linguist at Diwurruwurru-jaru Aboriginal Corporation facilitating revitalisation programs for Bilinarra and Ngarinyman people. I joined the Aboriginal Child Language project (University of Melbourne) in 2004 as a PhD student. I completed my PhD in 2008 and continued documenting Gurindji, Bilinarra and Gurindji Kriol as a part of the Jaminjungan and Eastern Ngumpin DOBES project, then with my own ELDP grant at the University of Manchester and finally returned to UQ with an ARC APD and then an ARC DECRA.

I am the author of Case-Marking in Contact (Benjamins, 2011), Bilinarra to English Dictionary (Batchelor Press, 2013) and a co-author of Bilinarra, Gurindji and Malngin Plants and Animals (LRM, 2012), A Grammar of Bilinarra (Mouton, 2013), Gurindji to English Dictionary (Batchelor Press, 2013), Kawarla: How to Make a Coolamon (Batchelor Press, 2014), Understanding Linguistic Fieldwork (2018, Routledge), Jingulu and Mudburra Plants and Animals (2018, Batchelor Press), Ngarinyman to English Dictionary (2019, Aboriginal Studies Press), Birrka Marnini: Making Things Mudburra (Batchelor Press, 2019), and Karu: Growing up Gurindji (Spinifex Press, 2019). I am also the co-editor of Loss and Renewal: Australian Languages since Colonisation (Mouton, 2016), Yijarni: True Stories from Gurindji Country (2016, Aboriginal Studies Press) and Mayarni-kari Yurrk: More Stories from Gurindji Country (2016, Batchelor Press).

Professor Meakins is also a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.