• Top End Language Lab

    Language ~ Culture ~ Technology ~ Wellbeing

Social and Technological Innovation
for Linguistic and Cultural Vitality

Australia’s Top End is a place of great linguistic and cultural diversity, including many Indigenous languages. Some are taught to children as a first language, others are undergoing revival. We are investigating questions like: How are people keeping their languages strong through old and new knowledge practices? How can Australia’s First Nations benefit from AI without losing control of our languages? How can we work effectively across cultures to sustain Australia’s linguistic diversity for the benefit of all?

Learn more about our research projects and PhD opportunities.

Staff

Steven Bird, Sustaining linguistic diversity, generative AI for Indigenous languages

James Bednall, Community-led language documentation, revitalisation and maintenance

Nicole Curtin, Promoting diversity and inclusion through education

Awni Etaywe, Forensic linguistics, violent extremist discourse, and semiotics of compassion in strategic digital communication

Cat Kutay, Indigenous knowledge management

Helen Verran Cultural, social and philosophical studies of language use in context

PhD Students

 Angelina Aquino, Disaster communication, intercultural translation, and language technology

Annie Cameron, Digital collection management and language revitalisation

Ian Gumbula, Language vitality and intercultural communication

Tereza Hlaváčková, Sustaining traditional food practices

Julia Mainzinger, Role of technology in language and knowledge transmission in oral language communities

Henry Leslie-O’Neill, Co-designing pedagogical resources for language revitalisation (with ANU)

Julie Walker, Yinhamah: Transmitting women’s knowledge

Brandon Wiltshire, Codesign for language revitalisation

Past PhD Projects

  • Cathy Bow (2020), Entanglements of digital technologies and Indigenous language work in the Northern Territory (with ANU)
  • Mat Bettinson (2020), Enabling large-scale collaboration in language conservation (with U Melbourne)
  • Nicole Curtin (2022), Moving forward while looking back: Exploring reconciliation pathways through Indigenous knowledge sharing in tourism
  • Éric Le Ferrand (2022), Leveraging speech recognition for interactive transcription in Australian Aboriginal communities
  • William Lane (2022), Morphological complexity and interactive language processing
  • Brandon Wiltshire (2024), You gotta feel good first before you can start learning language”: Understanding how and why Indigenous language revitalisation programs work according to local perspectives