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Dr Samantha Disbray

Senior Lecturer in Endangered Langu

School of Languages and Cultures
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
s.disbray@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 56896

Overview

My role in the School of Languages and Cultures is Lecturer in Endangered Languages, focussed on the development of an Indigenous Languages Revitalisation program. Since 2021 I have worked closely with Indigenous Industry Fellows Des Crump and Robert McLellan and an Indigenous Steering Committee to consult and design the program. I am also an active researcher, with several projects in Central Australia.

My approach to teaching and research is collaborative, community-guided and applied. This informed by my on-going self-reflexivity as a non-Indigenous woman and my experience living and working on unceded Kaurna, Arrernte, Warumungu, Warlpiri, Pintupi-Luritja country and, since moving to the University of Queensland in 2019, Jagera and Turrbal country.

My academic research life began in 2004, after a decade as an educator and community linguist. I worked with Warumungu linguist B Morrison Nakkamarra on the ARC funded Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition Project and after the completion of my PhD research at the University of Melbourne in 2008, I returned to industry as regional linguist with the Northern Territory Department of Education.

Since 2014 I have held research positions at Charles Darwin University on the Red Dirt Education project, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Languages at the Australian National University. In this project I worked with Warumungu linguists and families to return and repurpose a set of archived recordings for language and cultural revitalisation through arts-based practice, an outcome of which was the 2019 co-curated exhibition 'Ankkinyi Mangurr, Ankkinyi Apparr' at the 2019 Tarnanthi Fesitval of Contemporary Art.

I have a published Warumungu learner's dictionary, language teacher resource books, 15 articles, 10 book chapters and a co-edited volume, along with numerous commissioned reports and reviews in education and languages policy. I currently hold an ARC Discovery grant for the project 'The Illustrated Literature of Papunya and Strelley, 1979-1998) in collaboration with University of Western Australia.

Research Interests

  • Languages education
  • Bilingual education
  • Indigenous languages reclamation, revitalisation and maintenance
  • Discourse studies

Research Impacts

My work has made diverse impacts, locally, nationally and internationally. In the field of languages in education, my publications have informed policy and implementation in the Northern Territory Department of Education. I have been contracted to design curriculum and deliver professional learning. I have consulted for the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust to guide program development and implementation (see links). A collaboration with the Indigenous peak body First Languages Australia to document successful elements of language programs prompted and informs the National Strategy for Languages currently in development (see links). Most recently, I was contracted to research good practice models for Indigenous languages education by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (forthcoming).

Combining language work and arts-based practice, I have worked innovatively to support community language and culture revitalisation and broader public education. The Ankkinyi Apparr, Ankkinyi Mangurr (Our language, our designs) exhibition, with Warumungu co-curators Rosemary Plummer Narrurlu, Sandra Morrison Nangala and Ronald Morrison Jungarrayi, grew from an archival repatriation project. The co-curators and I worked with visual artists and community members to develop a body of work, including video material (see links), which showed in the 2019 Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Indigenous Arts in Adelaide to 16,000 visitors and at Nyinkka Nyunyu Culture Centre in Tennant Creek in 2020-2021.

Through my work with the Papunya Bilingual Steering Committee, remarkable and nationally significant historical materials created during the Northern Territory Bilingual Program have been digitised and made available through the National Library of Australia (see links). My collaborators and I are commissioned to collect oral histories for the National Oral History and Folklore Collection.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, University of Melbourne

Publications

  • Book Chapter: Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia

    Wigglesworth, Gillian and Disbray, Samantha (2023). Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia. The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages. (pp. 720-727) edited by Claire Bowern. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0062

  • Book Chapter: University-School Partnerships

    Hashimoto, Kayoko and Disbray, Samantha (2023). University-School Partnerships. Language Policy. (pp. 3-17) Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-38754-8_1

  • Book: Mangurr-jangu Mirlamirlajinjikki - Teaching and learning with pictures

    Harrison, Angela and Disbray, Samantha (2022). Mangurr-jangu Mirlamirlajinjikki - Teaching and learning with pictures. Wallsend, NSW Australia: First Languages Australia.

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Grants

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Supervision

  • THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN EARLY LITERACY POLICIES AND PROGRAMS

    Doctor Philosophy

  • Language rights and minority language publishing in Australia.

    Doctor Philosophy

View all Supervision

Publications

Book

Book Chapter

  • Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia

    Wigglesworth, Gillian and Disbray, Samantha (2023). Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia. The Oxford Guide to Australian Languages. (pp. 720-727) edited by Claire Bowern. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198824978.003.0062

  • University-School Partnerships

    Hashimoto, Kayoko and Disbray, Samantha (2023). University-School Partnerships. Language Policy. (pp. 3-17) Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-38754-8_1

  • Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia

    Disbray, Samantha and Wigglesworth, Gillian (2019). Indigenous children’s language practices in Australia. The Palgrave Handbook of Minority Languages and Communities. (pp. 357-381) edited by Gabrielle Hogan-Brun and Bernadette O’Rourke. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-54066-9_14

  • Curriculum as knowledge system: the Warlpiri theme cycle

    Disbray, Samantha and Martin, Barbara (2018). Curriculum as knowledge system: the Warlpiri theme cycle. Language practices of indigenous children and youth: the transition from home to school. (pp. 23-48) edited by Gillian Wigglesworth, Jane Simpson and Jill Vaughan. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-60120-9_2

  • A thematic history of bilingual education in the Northern Territory

    Devlin, Brian, Disbray, Samantha and Devlin, Nancy (2017). A thematic history of bilingual education in the Northern Territory. History of bilingual education in the Northern Territory: people, programs and policies. (pp. 1-10) edited by Brian Clive Devlin, Samantha Disbray and Nancy Regine Friedman Devlin. Singapore: Springer Singapore. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_1

  • Consolidation, power through leadership and pedagogy, and the rise of accountability, 1980–1998

    Disbray, Samantha and Devlin, Brian (2017). Consolidation, power through leadership and pedagogy, and the rise of accountability, 1980–1998. History of bilingual education in the northern territory: people, programs and policies. (pp. 101-112) edited by Brian Clive Devlin, Samantha Disbray and Nancy Regine Friedman Devlin. Singapore: Springer . doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_9

  • Policy and practice now

    Disbray, Samantha (2017). Policy and practice now. History of bilingual education in the Northern Territory: people, programs and policies. (pp. 237-246) edited by Brian Clive Devlin, Samantha Disbray and Nancy Regine Friedman Devlin. Singapore: Springer Singapore. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-2078-0_19

  • ‘Red dirt’ schools and pathways into higher education

    Guenther, John, Disbray, Samantha, Benveniste, Tessa and Osborne, Sam (2017). ‘Red dirt’ schools and pathways into higher education. Indigenous pathways, transitions and participation in higher education: from policy to practice. (pp. 251-270) edited by Jack Frawley, Steve Larkin and James A. Smith. Singapore: Springer . doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-4062-7_15

  • Evaluating the Bilingual Education Program in Warlpiri schools

    Disbray, Samantha (2014). Evaluating the Bilingual Education Program in Warlpiri schools. Studies in Language Companion Series. (pp. 25-46) Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi: 10.1075/slcs.147.03dis

Journal Article

Other Outputs

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

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Links

ResearcherID: N-2070-2013

ORCID: 0000-0001-5265-7109

Scopus ID: 55962777400

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