Summer School - Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

The Centre’s annual Summer School is a flagship educational event on Australia’s linguistics calendar. Over the course of five days, we bring together leading national and international scholars to present the latest research in the field through intensive ‘deep dives’ across the multi-disciplinary breadth of the science of languages.

Summer School draws on expertise across the Centre’s programs, member universities and international partners to provide intensive training, enrich existing knowledge and catalyse new research collaborations. Participants range from advanced undergraduate students through to senior academics. Many of the courses require no previous knowledge or experience, only a burning curiosity about the dynamics of the world’s many and greatly varied languages.

This year’s Summer School will have a dual focus on the intersection of language and technology, and community engagement. Aspiring linguists, as well as students with backgrounds in engineering, AI and computer science, will have an opportunity to learn about computational linguistics and natural language processing, including practical, hands-on sessions using the latest software tools and practices. Prominent researches will bring their extensive insights and experience from the field working with Australian and other indigenous communities to document, study and revitalise their languages.

The 2018 Summer School program offers courses in streams over four days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday). Each course consists of four 1.5 hour sessions over the four days and will have the same time slot each day. 

Beginning with a daily masterclass on the foundations of language by Professor Stephen Levinson,  the program offers twelve courses, each delivered over four days. Other highlights include Professor Nick Evans’ popular linguistic field methods course on an Australian language, and Professor Leanne Hinton imparting a lifetime of knowledge on working as an academic with indigenous communities. Meanwhile Google’s Daan van Esch will need two sessions per day to get his students fully up to date with the latest tech in machine learning and automatic speech recognition.

Summer Schools have become famous for building a community of interest across the many disciplines of language science – and this year will be no different. We break up the intensive course program up on the Wednesday  with optional workshops on lighter topics, discussion sessions, opportunities for networking, and of course – a busy social calendar as well.

Date and Times

Location

132 Lennox Crossing, 2601 Acton

Speaker

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