Farewell message from Debbie

Some end of year news for the Hub is that I am finishing up my Research Fellow role, and will be moving into a research and teaching role in the School of Languages and Linguistics. I will be starting that role in January, working in the ESL program which includes teaching the 5 week intensive International Academic Program (IAP) as well as teaching some Linguistics subjects. I will also be continuing my research, especially in the areas of sociophonetics and Australian English.

I have worked in the Hub since it started in 2020, with some outputs such as:

• a paper on “Acoustic Injustice” by Fraser & Loakes (2020);
• a paper about indistinct audio and automatic speech recognition (Loakes 2022 – but look for an update soon in this same special issue!);
• a paper (almost due for submission) on speaker attribution; and
• an upcoming chapter about twins’ speech in The Oxford Handbook of Forensic Phonetics.

I have also enjoyed communicating Hub news through this blog, as you will see from previous posts this year and prior!

I would like to wish the Hub well, and I welcome the two new incoming Research Fellows that the Hub are hiring who will be joining in 2024. I will still have a relationship with the Hub, particularly through a collaboration with the Hub and Kirsty McDougall. Helen and I will also continue to work together in the Forensic Speech Science Committee of ASSTA (The Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association).

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Hello – this is Helen

Just to say how great it has been having Debbie in the Hub the last three years. Although most of it was the pandemic, and all along she has only been part time, she has really made a wonderful contribution and the Hub will always remember that.

I wish Debbie all the best in her new role (I know how much she enjoys teaching) and I look forward to continuing our collaboration wherever sociophonetics and forensic intersect.