Co-Directors
Prof. Dany Adone
Dany Adone is Professsor and Chair of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Cologne. In Australia, she is also a University Professorial Fellow at Northern Institute/Charles Darwin University, a Visiting Professor at AIATSIS and a Visiting Scholar at the Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring Language and Culture Centre in Kununurra. She has lived in Arnhem Land/NT, Australia for over five years.
Together with Prof. Neumeier she has launched the Dr. R. Marika Chair for Australian Studies at the University of Cologne (2009-2014) and acted as the director for the Linguistics section. She organises regularly workshops on Indigenous languages of Australia at the University of Cologne and Charles Darwin University. She offers regular courses on Australian Languages. Her research focuses on Language Endangerment and Language Contact in Indigenous Australia. She has conducted field work in Australia since 1992 and works mostly with several Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land.
Among her most recent publications are Grammar Sketch of Yolŋu Sign Language (2014, with E.L. Maypilama), and The Sociolinguistics of Alternate Sign Languages of Arnhem Land (2015, with E.L. Maypilama). She has also edited a special issue of Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts on Indigenous Sign Languages in 2015 and is a member of the editorial board of ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations’ and First Peoples’ Cultures (Penn State Press).
Prof. Beate Neumeier
Beate Neumeier is Professor of English at the University of Cologne. Her research is in gender, performance, and postcolonial studies. She is the editor of the e-journal Gender Forum and published widely on women’s writing, Anglophone drama, contemporary British-Jewish literature, postcolonial literatures and Australian studies.
Together with her colleague Prof. Adone she has launched the DAAD-funded Dr. R. Marika Chair for Australian Studies at the University of Cologne (2009-2014), and organised its Literary/ Cultural Studies section. Together they initiated collaborative research and exchange projects with Australian colleagues, and established an Australian Studies program at the University of Cologne. In 2015 they set up a network between German universities to develop an online Australian Studies project. She is also current president of the German Australian Studies Association (GASt).
Among her book publications are Engendering Realism and Postmodernism: Contemporary Women Writers in Britain (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), Dichotonies: Gender and Music (Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2009), Gothic Renaissance (Manchester UP, 2014), coedited with Elisabeth Bronfen, and Decolonizing the Landscape: Indigenous Cultures in Australia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), coedited with Kay Schaffer. Currently she is preparing a monograph on Kim Scott and Alexis Wright.
Team
Melanie Brück
Research Coordinator
Melanie A. Brück is a PostDoc Researcher and Lecturer at the Chair of Applied English Linguistics (Prof. Adone) in the English Department/University of Cologne and the Coordinator of the Language Laboratory of the Faculty of Arts & Humanities/ University of Cologne. Her research interests focus on the interaction of language and culture, multimodality, language contact, and the Indigenous languages of Australia and the Oceanic region.
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David Kern
AS-Online Coordinator
David Kern is a research assistant and lecturer in the English Department at the University of Cologne. He studied English, Philosophy and Education at the University of Cologne from 2009 to 2016 and holds a State Examination (Equals M.A.) and a German teaching degree. He is currently working on a PhD Project in Indigenous Literary Environmental Activism.
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Victoria Herche
Public Relations
Victoria Herche is a post-doctoral Researcher and Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Cologne. After studying Theatre, Film and TV Studies, English Studies and German Studies at the University of Cologne, she concluded a PhD project on “The Adolescent Country – Re-Imagining Youth and Coming of age in Contemporary Australian film” to be published in Universitätsverlag Winter (2019).
Thomas Batchelor
Events Coordinator
Thomas studied at the University of Sydney until 2017 and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in linguistics. Since graduating with First Class Honours, he is now working as a Research Assistant in the English Department at the University of Cologne, where he is also working on a PhD project on language change and contact in Australian Kriol around Kununurra.
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