Catherine Travis

Catherine Travis is a Professor of Modern European Languages at the Australian National University (ANU), affiliated with the School of Literature, Languages & Linguistics and The Migration Hub. She holds a BA/AS (Hons) from ANU and a PhD from La Trobe University. Her research focuses on sociolinguistic variation, bilingualism, and corpus linguistics, with notable projects such as the Sydney Speaks corpus and the Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA).

Education:

• Bachelor of Asian Studies (First Class Honours in Linguistics and Japanese) – ANU
• PhD in Linguistics and Spanish – La Trobe University (2002)

Research Interests:
Catherine’s work explores how social and linguistic factors influence language variation and change. She employs variationist frameworks to study spontaneous speech in diverse communities, including regional Australian English, Spanish-English bilinguals in New Mexico, and migrant communities in Sydney. Her projects emphasize digital infrastructure for humanities research and ethical language data management.

Grants & Projects:

• ARC-funded 'Voices of Regional Australia' (bushfire stories and dialect patterns)
• ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Sydney Speaks project)
• ARDC-supported Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA)
• NSF-funded New Mexico Spanish-English codeswitching study

Awards:

• Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

Labs & Teams:
Catherine leads the Sydney Speaks initiative and collaborates with global networks in sociolinguistics and corpus development. She contributes to interdisciplinary projects addressing migration, language policy, and technological applications in humanities research.