LANGUAGE AND CULTURE RESEARCH CENTRE College of Arts, Society and Education — James Cook University PO Box 6811, Cairns, North Queensland, 4870, Australia Director: Distinguished Professor A.Y. Aikhenvald; Deputy-Director: Professor R.M.W. Dixon
[email protected] [email protected] Bulletin — February 2020 The Language and Culture Research Centre (LCRC) is nested within the College of Arts, Society and Education (Dean, Professor Anne-Marie Morgan) and works in association with the Cairns Institute (Director, Distinguished Professor Stewart Lockie) at James Cook University. Overview James Cook University is recognised as the leading regional university in Australia (turning 50 in 2020). Its research profile is internationally acclaimed. In keeping with this, the Language and Culture Research Centre has consolidated its status as a major player at the cutting edge of linguistics. Its strategic direction remains multifaceted analysis of the languages of Papua New Guinea, South America, and Indigenous Australia. Our field linguists work with local communities for language maintenance and social empowerment. Linguistics at JCU (represented exclusively by the LCRC) was evaluated at 4 ('Above world level') in the latest ERA (Excellence Research Australia) assessment by the Australian Research Council. This is a significant achievement for a high-performing discipline with only one tenured faculty member, augmented by Post-Doctoral fellows on grants, plus distinguished adjuncts. The ARC also awarded its highest rating in terms of impact to a case study 'Documenting language in PNG', by Distinguished Professor Aikhenvald. Members of LCRC continue to publish academic monographs and papers in the most prestigious international outlets. Hand-in-hand with theoretically- informed descriptive studies, we stand at the forefront of work on inductively based grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic generalisations concerning the ways in which languages work, with particular focus on tropical areas.