ALS 2024 Plenary Speakers

Talk Title: Turbulent times:  a century of linguistic change in Falkland Island English

David Britain has been Professor of Modern English Linguistics at the University of Bern in Switzerland since 2010, having previously worked in New Zealand and the UK. His research interests embrace language variation and change, varieties of English (especially in Southern England, the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific), dialect contact and attrition, dialect ideologies, and the dialectology-human geography interface, especially with respect to space/place, urban/rural and the role of mobilities. He is co-author (with Laura Rupp) of Linguistic perspectives on a variable English morpheme: let’s talk about –s (Palgrave, 2019), editor of Language in the British Isles (Cambridge University Press, 2007), co-editor (with Jenny Cheshire) of Social Dialectology (Benjamin, 2003), and co-author of Linguistics: an Introduction (with Andrew Radford, Martin Atkinson, Harald Clahsen and Andrew Spencer) (Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 2009). David was Associate Editor of the Journal of Sociolinguistics between 2008 and 2017. 

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Talk Title: Through the Chinese looking glass: from bilingual to trilingual development

Virginia Yip received her BA in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California. She is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages and Director of the Childhood Bilingualism Research Centre and Chinese University of Hong Kong - Peking University Joint Research Centre for Language and Human Complexity. Her research interests include early child language development, language and cognitive development, bilingualism, bilingual acquisition, second language acquisition, Cantonese, Mandarin and comparative Chinese grammar, psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience. The monograph The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact, co-authored with Stephen Matthews (Cambridge University Press) received the Linguistic Society of America’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award.

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Talk Title: The AIATSIS purpose in our 60th anniversary year

Dr Caroline Hughes AM is a Ngunnawal Elder who has led language work in her community for several decades. She is the Executive Director of Collections Services Group at AIATSIS and has also served as Executive Director of Research and Education Group and as acting CEO of AIATSIS. Caroline has made significant contributions to the field of education throughout her career, which spans over 30 years. Caroline has led the design and delivery of cultural programs that have strengthened the cultural capability of individuals and teams across organisations within government and private sectors. Caroline came to AIATSIS from the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) where she was the Director of the CIT Yurauna Centre of Educational Excellence for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. In recognition of her significant service to the Indigenous community of Canberra, Caroline was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2023. Caroline has also been shortlisted for the 2021 ACT Australian of the Year and was a recipient of the ACT Women’s Honour Roll in 2018.

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