More than 60 postgraduate students from leading international and Australian universities will be attending the annual Rhizomes Conference at The University of Queensland from 30-31 January.
Now in its seventh year, the two-day conference will feature a keynote address by international language expert Emeritus Professor Roly Sussex, OAM.
Postgraduate students from universities across Australia and the world will present more than 40 papers based on the theme Words, Power and Identity.
UQ’s School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies began and continues to run the event.
Head of UQ’s School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies Professor Tim Mehigan said the conference had grown from strength to strength over the past seven years.
“Due to the dedicated and continuing efforts of the School’s postgraduate students, Rhizomes today has a reputation for being one of the leading postgraduate conferences in the area of Languages, Linguistics and Cultural Studies in the world,” Professor Mehigan said.
“The School is delighted to once again provide our support for this conference and enable students from universities in Australia and overseas to present their research, exchange ideas and build networks in a friendly and relaxed academic environment.”
Academic Conference Advisor Dr Annie Pohlman said this year’s conference theme had attracted a lot of interest.
“The 2013 theme is a little broader than usual because it encapsulates a whole range of areas while still playing to the School’s strengths in discourse analysis, linguistic and cultural studies,” Dr Pohlman said.
“This year about one third of the student delegates are international and although mainly PhD students, we also have Master of Philosophy and Master of Arts students and early career researchers, mostly within the humanities discipline.
“The conference began in 2005 when I and a small group of PhD students decided that as there were no conferences which matched our research themes, we would start our own.
“The conference was named Rhizomes after a theoretical concept from two theorists – Deleuze and Guattari - who wrote about how people can connect and learn from each other’s ideas and discourses.
“We are pleased that our initial idea is still proving popular after so many years.”
Media: Dr Annie Pohlman, 07 3365 6786, a.pohlman@uq.edu.au or Lynda Flower, 07 3365 6247, l.flower@uq.edu.au
