After completing a BA degree with first class Honours in Asian Studies (Japanese and Linguistics) in 1974,[1] Austin earned his PhD with his thesis entitled A grammar of the Diyari language of north-east South Australia at the Australian National University (ANU) in 1978.[2]
He became the Märit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics[3] in January 2003[1] and then Emeritus Professor in Field Linguistics at SOAS on his retirement in December 2018.[4] Throughout his career, Austin has been deeply involved in work to document and describe languages that are otherwise on the verge of extinction.[5]
During his retirement, he worked with colleagues at University of Warsaw and Leiden University on an EU Horizon2020 Twinning collaboration called the Engaged Humanities project.[6] He also worked with Stefanie Pillai of the University of Malaya, on a research project funded by the British Academy in Malaysia. In 2020 he was awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship (2021-2023) to work on a dictionary of Diyari (South Australia) and a biography of his Diyari teacher Ben Murray.[4][failed verification]
Work
He has done fieldwork on twelve Australian Aboriginal languages, particularly those from northern New South Wales ( such as Gamilaraay/Kamilaroi), northern South Australia, and north-west Western Australia, publishing several bilingual dictionaries. These included, in collaboration with David Nathan, the first fully page-formatted hypertext dictionary of an Australian language, with the creation of the 1994 Gamilaraay online dictionary.[7][4]
Dieri
He has worked extensively and intensively on the Dieri (Diyari) language of northern SA. He first learned Diyari in 1974, from several fluent native-speakers, including Leslie Russell, Frieda Merrick, Rosa Warren, and Ben Murray, who he encountered in Marree, South Australia. Along with Luise Hercus and David Trefry, he did much research on the language in the 1970s. Austin published a grammar of Diyari in 1981.[8]
From 2011 he has been working with the Dieri Aboriginal Corporation on revitalisation of the language.[4] In 2013 he published a draft Diyari dictionary, writing in the preface that a companion grammar was also available, and that a text collection was in preparation.[9] In 2014 he published an article "And still they speak Diyari", in which he wrote of the unique place of the language, as the subject of intensive interest by outsiders as well as native speakers for nearly 140 years, and that not only is it not extinct, but it is living and being maintained for the future.[10][11]
Since 2013 Austin has maintained a blog on Diyari.[8] The blog is one of a number of language revitalisation and reclamation activities held in conjunction with the Dieri community.
2010: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Humboldt Research Award[14]
2015: Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University (for playing "a crucial international part in drawing attention to endangered languages by emphasising the importance of documenting the human cultural heritage represented by the thousands of languages at risk of vanishing in the near future. His motto that 'every lost word means yet another lost world' has boosted schools' and the public's interest in endangered languages" .[15])
2018–19: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Humboldt Research Award[14]
