Previously, Thomas has worked as a Research Assistant at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development at Western Sydney University in Milperra, as well as in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. His Honours thesis dealt with the topic of transitivity marking variation in Australian Kriol of the Barunga area.

She completed her Master of Education (English, Physical Education) at the University of Cologne and the German Sports University Cologne in 2016. Subsequently, she was awarded a six-month scholarship for preparing an English Studies doctoral project before becoming a full-time PhD scholarship holder at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. She paused her scholarship and later continued in part-time after having her first child in late 2019.

Her thesis (successfully defended in September 2021) is entitled “The Negotiation of Im/Mobilities in Contemporary Anglophone Māori Short Fiction”. In the course of her academic career, she has spent several shorter periods in the Pacific region for research purposes and to attend a number of interdisciplinary conferences. Thus far, she has published on Māori texts (ranging from short stories to a novella, novel and poem) written in English and on literary research ethics. She first established connections to Australia in her work in 2019, when she presented on Māori literary references to the continent at a trilateral workshop at the ANU in Canberra alongside other CAS members. She recently focused on Australian refugee poetry in a paper presented at the 17^th biennial GASt conference “Australian Seascapes” (Sep 2021). Leonie’s research interests include Indigenous and postcolonial theories, Pacific literatures and networks, mobility studies, memory studies, and nuclear narrations.

Christina studied Linguistics at Paderborn University and Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf with a focus on language acquisition, computer linguistics and language diversity. As a Research Assistant and Lecturer at Prof. D. Adone’s Chair of Applied English Linguistics Christina co-organised workshops and guest lectures about Indigenous languages of Australia. Until April 2017 she served as Events Coordinator of the Centre for Australian Studies. Since 2021 she is on the Advisory Board of the FID AAC. Her current research interests include endangered spoken and signed languages and their revitalisation, typology, and the morphology/syntax interface. Her work with the Miriwoong people was inspired by a six-month internship at Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring Language and Culture Centre and supported by grants from DAAD and FEL. Christina’s most recent conference papers and publications were concerned with contributions of linguistics to Native Title Claims, linguistic research methods in remote Australia, definiteness and possession in Miriwoong, and the influence of linguistic rights and identification with territory and language on language vitality.