Current Research Projects

The following are some of the current research projects being undertaken by members of the Department. (For more on individual projects of staff and students see under biographical notes on present staff and present PhD students and their thesis research projects.) A listing of former PhD students and their thesis topics is also included in this site.

• Proto Oceanic Lexicon. Reconstructing the lexical domains of Proto Oceanic, an Austronesian interstage ancestral to some 500 Pacific Isand languages, with particular reference to issues in Pacific culture history. This research is being funded by the ARC Discovery program.


• Comparative Papuan. Unravelling the history of the 750 or so non-Austronesian languages of the New Guinea area. A collaborative project with the University of Sydney.


• Language Atlas of the Pacific. A new revised edition.


• Traditional knowledge and use of wild plants and animals in a New Guinea Highlands speech community. A collaborative project with scholars in PNG and NZ.


• Documenting Rongga, a marginalized small language of south-central Flores, Indonesia. This is a three-year language documentation project funded by the ELDP (Endangered Language Foundation Programme), SOAS London ( January 2004-December 2006, worth £104,818). Expected outcome: an archive of a variety of digital linguistic and cultural data (to be hosted by the ELDP and PARADISEC), a grammar, a basic dictionary, and teaching materials.


• Documenting Waimaha, East Timor: Language endangerment and maintenance in a newly emerging nation.This is a collaborative research project being conducted by John Bowden, John Hajek (Melbourne University) and Nikolaus Himmelmann (Bochum University). The research is being funded by the German VolkswagenStiftung.


• Language contact in eastern East Timor.This is a collaborative research project being conducted by John Bowden and John Hajek (Melbourne University). The research is being funded by the ARC discovery program.


• Linguistic prehistory in Mainland Southeast Asia: 2000 years of language contact between Austroasiatic and Chamic speakers. This is research by Paul Sidwell that is being funded by an ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship.