Language and Society Centre Community Engagement
Through the community profile of the Language and Society Centre, the Linguistics program and other programs continue to disseminate research findings relevant to ethnic communities, on areas including the raising of children bilingually and the use of ethnic languages in the community, particularly in legal and paralegal contexts.
Louisa Willoughby, who received the 2002 off-the-top MGS PhD scholarship for the faculty research strength 'Language in Society', has begun her work on a comparative study (Australia/Germany) of language in the migration context. Her research project has strong community as well as policy applications. She will be working closely with local schools. As a member of the Executive of the Debaters' Association of Victoria, Lousia is also currently developing an ESL debating competition - a community project which is closely related to aspects of her PhD work.