Confirmed Invited Speakers

Plenaries:

  • Prof. Theo van Leeuwen – University of Southern Denmark

  • Dr Jing Hao – Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

  • Prof. Louise Ravelli & A/Prof. Anikó Hatoss – University of New South Wales

  • Dr Lucy Macnaught – Auckland University of Technology

  • Prof. Pauline Jones – University of Wollongong

  • A/Prof. David Caldwell – Adelaide University

Keynotes:

  • A/Prof. Emilia Djonov – Macquarie University

  • Dr Thu Ngo – University of New South Wales

  • Dr Cassi Liardét – Macquarie University

  • Dr Jennifer Blunden – University of Technology, Sydney

  • Dr Lorenzo Logi – University of New South Wales

  • Dr Lilián I. Ariztimuño – University of Wollongong

Form and Meaning

Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark, Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney and Honorary Professor at the University of New South Wales and the Australian Catholic University. He has published widely in the areas of visual communication, multimodality, and critical discourse analysis and co-founded the journals Social Semiotics and Visual Communication. His latest books are The Semiotics of Toys and Games (with Staffan Selander), Multimodality and Identity and Multimodality and Time.

Plenaries

Prof. Theo van Leeuwen – University of Southern Denmark

Dr Jing Hao – Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

Rethinking protolanguage

Dr Jing Hao is an Assistant Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC). She previously held postdoctoral research fellowships at PUC and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, after completing her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Sydney. Her research publications focus primarily on text-based language descriptions and linguistic applications in literacy education. She is currently leading two research projects: one examines referring expressions in Chinese and Spanish from a comparative, text-based perspective (with Dr Beatriz Quiroz), and the other investigates the language development of a multilingual child (with Dr Lilián Ariztimoño and Dr Margarita Vidal).

Prof. Louise Ravelli & A/Prof. Anikó Hatoss


The University of New South Wales

Boosting heritage languages: multimodality in urban and digital spaces


Louise Ravelli is Professor of Communication in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and Joint Chief Editor of the journal, Visual Communication. She has a long-standing interest in multimodal communication, across language, image and the built environment, using social semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis. Books include Organizational Semiotics: Multimodal perspectives on organization studies (Routledge, 2023, with Theo van Leeuwen, Markus Hoellerer and Dennis Jancsary); Multimodality in the Built Environment: Spatial Discourse Analysis (Routledge, 2016, with Robert McMurtrie), and Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks (Routledge, 2006).


Dr Anikó Hatoss is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW, Sydney. Her research is focussed on heritage language maintenance, family language planning and linguistic aspects of intercultural relations. Her innovations include developing the emotive-relational model of family language policy and theorising spatio-temporal dimensions of language maintenance and shift.  Her research program on narratives, identities and intercultural relations has explored migrant and refugee narratives and brought attention to everyday racism. Her research program on urban multilingualism addresses linguistic social justice in the linguistic landscapes of Sydney. This work is published in a research monograph entitled “Everyday Multilingualism” (Hatoss 2023, Routledge). Currently she is the Lead CI of a Discovery project funded by the Australian Research Council (DP260102855) which aims to explore multilingual practices of Australian youth in diverse social and digital spaces of interaction).


Dr Lucy Macnaught

Auckland University of Technology

Driving AI in our linguistics lane: Using SFL principles to interact with and design AI

Dr Lucy Macnaught is a Senior Lecturer in the role of Learning Advisor at Auckland University of Technology. She collaborates with faculty to teach academic literacy within coursework and research programs. Her research interests include embedded approaches to academic literacy development, multimodal classroom metalanguage, and designing and integrating AI. Her book, Writing with Students, was shortlisted for the 2025 M.A.K. Halliday Book Prize.

Prof. Pauline Jones

University of Wollongong 

Gains, grifters and the ‘gold standard’: SFL and the national English curriculum, 15 years on.

Pauline Jones is Professor of Language in Education at the University of Wollongong. Drawing on systemic functional linguistics and genre-based literacy pedagogy, she has worked in teacher education and curriculum reform in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Her research focuses on understanding and supporting students’ literacy development and teacher professional learning, through a number of research projects around oral language, curriculum literacies, literacy transition points, and multimodality. She is co-author (with Beverly Derewianka) of Teaching Language in Context (OUP) as well as numerous publications deriving from research undertaken in collaboration with the profession.

A/Prof. David Caldwell

University of Adelaide

Exploring language-in-action-in-sport: Insights from SFL

David Caldwell is an Associate Professor of English Language and Literacy in the School of Education at Adelaide University. David’s research applies Systemic Functional Linguistics to a range of contemporary contexts, with a focus on the role language plays in learning, identity and inclusion. He has published widely in the emerging field of sport discourse, including linguistic analyses of post-match interviews between sports people and journalists; novel descriptions and analyses of language-in-action in sport; and explorations of the evaluative language of crowds, commentators and coaches.

Keynotes

A/Prof. Emilia Djonov

Macquarie University

Educational semiotics in early childhood education: How multimodal interactions enable young children to learn language, through language and about language

Emilia Djonov is Associate Professor at Macquarie School of Education, Macquarie University, Australia. She has expertise in critical and multimodal discourse analysis, social semiotics, systemic functional linguistics, early language and literacy, and multiliteracies education. Her collaborative research has examined semiotic software; children's engagement with transmedia narratives; young children's language and literacy learning in early childhood centres, homes and community settings; and citizen semiotics.

Dr Thu Ngo

University of New South Wales

Intermodal analysis of film texts: A method

Thu Ngo is senior lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, University of New South Wales. In her role, she trains undergraduate primary school English teachers and provides professional learning workshops for primary and secondary English teachers in teaching multimodal literature, particularly filmic literature. Her research uses Systemic Functional Linguistics and Semiotics theory to conceptualise meanings of participating film semiotic resources such as paralanguage, music and sound effects.

Her current interest is in children’s literature adaptation, film semiotics, multimodality, and evaluative language.

Dr Lorenzo Logi

University of New South Wales

How LLM AI Chatbots deploy interpersonal resources to negotiate discourses of prejudice and oppression

Lorenzo Logi is a sessional academic based in Sydney and working across Australian universities including UNSW, Sydney University, Macquarie University and Charles Darwin University. His research interests include linguistics, humour, multimodality and new media, and his most recent book, Characters and Surprises in Stand-up Comedy was published in 2025 by Bloomsbury. 

Dr Lilián I. Ariztimuño

University of Wollongong

Do we always like the beautiful and kind, and dislike the ugly and nasty? Enriching attitudinal descriptions in spoken communication

Lilián I. Ariztimuño is a lecturer in English as a Global Language and Global Communication at the University of Wollongong. Her primary research interest lies in how sound contributes to meaning‑making in spoken English and the implications this has for teaching English as an additional language. She has published research on English sound semiosis in Language, Context and Text and was invited to co‑edit a Special Issue on sound and meaning for the Journal of World Languages, where some of her most recent work has also appeared. Lili enjoys collaborating with peers on projects that explore how sound contributes to meaning in context, spanning areas such as early language development, storytelling, health discourse, and the communication practices of people with disabilities.

Dr Jennifer Blunden

Museums communication: The flip side.

Jennifer Blunden works and researches in the museum and cultural heritage sectors, with a focus on issues of communication, access and public engagement. She gained her PhD in 2016 from the University of Technology Sydney with a linguistic and sociological study of museum exhibitions. Her research interests include museums and their social role and impact; the role played by language and other modes in shaping visitor experience, understanding and connection; the role of discourse in the construction of disciplinary knowledge, identity and practice; and the application of social semiotic theories of meaning-making to museum research, education and practice. She is currently an Industry Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney and teaches in the Museum Studies and Art Curatorship programs at the University of Sydney.


Dr Cassi Liardet

Macquarie University

Dr Cassi Liardet is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University, where she teaches in the postgraduate Applied Linguistics and TESOL program. Her research draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics to investigate academic literacy, grammatical metaphor, and doctoral pedagogy. She co-developed the Grammatical Metaphor List, a corpus-informed tool currently being extended through AI-assisted development. Her work on doctoral pedagogy, including supervisor-candidate co-authorship and thesis-by-publication practices, has informed institutional conversations about HDR policy and practice. She is co-founder of the Global Genre Research collaborative and leads The Shape of Australian Higher Degree Research, a large-scale empirical study mapping PhD thesis and publication practices across Australian universities.