ELAP PhD graduate - Dr Mary Chambers

Summer 2009 saw Mary Chambers become the fourth student to achieve a PhD Field Linguistics in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme.

Mary completed a BA degree in Italian at the University of Reading and spent a year in Papua New Guinea, before receiving funding from the AHRC in 2005 to study in the MA in Language Documentation and Description at HRELP. Her dissertation was 'Kurap Sumai and Tool Mai: a comparative study of Arop-Lokep and Karnai, two Austronesian languages of Papua New Guinea'.

Mary's PhD, also funded by the AHRC, consists of a documentation and description of Kubokota, an Austronesian language of the Solomon Islands. She has developed various practical products for use by the language community, including dictionaries, literacy materials and other literature. Her research interests include participant reference in discourse, spatial and temporal deixis, and the influence of geography and environment on language.

As well receiving her Doctorate, Mary and her husband Donald became the proud parents of a new baby daughter, Tamar.

Congratulations Mary!

For more information on Mary's research, visit her profile page