Professor Jane Simpson

Professor Simpson works on describing the grammar of Australian Indigenous languages, writing dictionaries, the grammar of different varieties of English, Indigenous children’s language at home and school, public policy with respect to languages and education, and the development of research infrastructure for language work (digital archiving).

She has worked with Aboriginal people on language revival projects and on language maintenance projects in Central Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. She has carried out interdisciplinary work on Northern Territory Aboriginal language claims with lawyers, anthropologists, surveyors and historians. This interdisciplinary work led to research on place-names, on kinship, and on history, in the Northern Territory, in South Australia and nationally, as well as on language and the law.

More recently Professor Simpson has worked on language education policy and language assessment, and has a more general interest in how language concerns are implemented in policies. This led to involvement in the 2020 National Indigenous Languages Report with a study of the connections between health, wellbeing and using Indigenous languages.