Samantha Rarrick

Dr. Samantha Rarrick is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University's School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, affiliated with the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Her research focuses on documenting endangered languages, particularly signed and spoken languages of the Pacific, including Kere and Sinasina Sign Language in Papua New Guinea, and Hawai‘i Sign Language. She emphasizes community-driven approaches to linguistic research, ensuring local stakeholders participate in decision-making. Dr. Rarrick holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa (2017), and has conducted postdoctoral research funded by the National Science Foundation (2017–2019).

Her teaching interests include language endangerment, documentation, Pacific languages, and sign languages. She supervises doctoral and master's students on topics ranging from climate-related semantics in Danish dialects to phonological variation in Hawai‘i Sign Language. Dr. Rarrick has received the 2021 Student Experience of Teaching Commendation and actively contributes to professional organizations like the Australian Linguistic Society and the Foundation for Endangered Languages. Her work bridges signed and spoken language documentation, addressing methodological challenges in corpus design and cross-modal linguistic analysis.

Key research projects include documenting Sinasina Sign Language, analyzing language ideologies in Papua New Guinea, and developing multimedia resources for Central Queensland Aboriginal languages. Dr. Rarrick's interdisciplinary approach integrates ethnography, typology, and computational methods to preserve linguistic diversity while fostering global awareness of endangered languages.