My contributions to linguistics have spanned various sub-disciplines, including theoretical, formal, and computational grammar, as well as typology and descriptive and documentary linguistics. All of my projects involve international collaborations with institutions in Australia, Indonesia, the UK, the US, Japan, Germany, and New Zealand, and locally with language communities.

My research aims to generate a deep understanding of how grammar works and to investigate how it can be explicitly modeled to produce a precise, empirically well-motivated description or analysis with theoretical, typological, and practical significance. I have immersed myself in linguistic theory, typology, and descriptive and documentary linguistics, with a particular focus on the numerous and diverse languages of Indonesia. I have also cultivated skills in corpus development and data management.

My theoretical work is primarily within the Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) framework. This includes implementing LFG in Indonesian languages, outlining the challenges this poses, and developing an LFG-based computational grammar of Indonesian. In language typology, descriptive linguistics, and language-culture documentation, I have conducted extensive research and linguistic fieldwork in remote areas of Indonesia, and organized capacity-building advocacy programs for minority language communities across the country. My recent research encompasses several projects, including two Papuan Projects funded by the ARC (2010-2014) and the ELDP (2016-2017), two Enggano Projects (2019-2023; 2023-2024) funded by UK AHRC grants, and the Barrier Islands Project (2023-2027) funded by the ARC. For my contributions to linguistics, I was elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2021 and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2022.

Career Highlights

• Head of Linguistics Program, CHL, CAP (2014 - Feb 2021, 2024 - ...)
• Convenor of the Indonesian Language Program, ANU (2021-2023)
• Convenor of BAS (Bachelor of Asian Studies) (2018 - 2021)
• Postdoc Fellow (2001), Research Fellow (2004), Fellow (2008), Senior Fellow/Asc Professor (2015), Professor (2021), Linguistics, CHL, CAP, ANU
• Humboldt Fellow, Cologne University, Germany (2012-2014)
• Research Fellow, IIAS, Leiden U, the Netherlands (2006)
• Lecturer, Udayana University, Indonesia (1986-...)

MA (Applied Linguistics), MPhil (Linguistics, Sydney U), PhD (Linguistics, Sydney U)

Austronesian and Papuan languages of Eastern Indonesia, language typology, syntactic theory, Indonesian linguistics, Applied Linguistics, language documentation, translation, sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics.

I incorporate my latest research into my teaching. The courses that I teach at the ANU include Syntactic theory/Advanced Morphosyntax, Indonesian (across different levels), Introduction to syntax, Graduate reading course, Morphology, Austronesian languages, and Interdisciplinary Linguistics