Dingo Lingo: Australia's past through the lens of biology, language & music

This project investigates 'dingo' related words in Indigenous languages to transform our understanding of the linguistic landscape of Australia from a static collection of languages to a complex picture of vibrant language exchange and social dynamics. As the dingo arrived around 4000yrs ago, these words are within the scope of evolutionary models of language.

The project seeks to understand the nature of human-dingo relationships through the complex semantics of words, songs, place names and Creation stories through ethnographic research and to understand the dynamic historical relationships between Indigenous groups by creating a database to compare dingo-related words across languages, speech styles and song.

This project is funded by an Australian Research Council grant and includes a scholarship (see below), fieldwork and conference costs for a PhD/MPhil student.

The University of Queensland (UQ) is a globally recognised research-intensive institution ranked among the world’s top 50 universities. UQ is renowned for its research excellence across diverse disciplines, including in language, communication, and culture, in which UQ is rated “above world standard” (2018 Excellence in Research for Australia assessment). Linguistics at the University of Queensland ranked 63rd in the 2025 QS World Rankings. For Indigenous applicants, you would be joining three other Indigenous students under the supervision of Professor Felicity Meakins. For ethnomusicology applicants, you may wish to be based at the University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

This project is supported by the Research project scholarship.

Learn more about the Research project scholarship.

You must contact the principal supervisor for this project to discuss your interest. You should only complete the online application after you have reached agreement on supervision.

Always make sure you are approaching your potential supervisor in a professional way. We have provided some guidelines for you on how to contact a supervisor.

Your application will be assessed on a competitive basis.

We take into account your:

• previous academic record
• publication record
• honours and awards
• employment history

A working knowledge of linguistics, computational biology, ethnomusicology, First Nations languages in Australia and/or ethnobiology would be necessary to someone working on this project.

You will demonstrate academic achievement in the field/s of linguistics, computational biology, ethnomusicology and/or or ethnobiology and the potential for scholastic success.

A background or knowledge of working with Indigenous Australians is highly desirable.

To be considered for this scholarship, please email the following documents to Professor Felicity Meakins (f.meakins@uq.edu.au):

• Cover letter
• CV
• Academic transcript/s
• Evidence for meeting UQ's English language proficiency requirements eg TOEFL, IELTS

Please note the following: Submitting the above documents does not constitute a full application for admission into The University of Queensland's PhD program. If you are selected as the preferred applicant, you will then be invited to submit a full application for admission. You can familiarise yourself with the documents required for this process on the UQ Study website.