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I'm really interested in the intersection between language and culture.
And so my research allows me to explore that from when children
are born and then upwards.
I did my undergrad degree right here at Melbourne Uni.
It was a bachelor of arts and science with an honours year in linguistics.
I chose to do my PhD at Melbourne because there was supervisor
I really wanted to work with.
I heard that there was this project working with Sherpa children
in the Nepal Himalaya and it sounded wonderful.
And the research support and the research environment
was also really, really fantastic.
My supervisor is Dr. Barbara Kelly, Languages and Linguistics.
My PhD is called Language Development and Socialisation
in Sherpa and I'm looking at the Sherpa language,
which is spoken by a group of Tibetan descended people
in the Nepal Himalayas,
just a couple of days form Mount Everest base camp.
I'm looking at how children are spoken to and then in turn
how that effects the way that they learn to become competent
members of their society.
The culture itself is really interesting because they're Tibetan Buddhist,
and so their underlying belief system is really quite different to
what we might have here or what occurs in other places in Nepal.
What I am really interested in was teasing out whether or not
that effects how children are raised.
Some other advantages of doing my PhD at Melbourne,
the wonderful staff that surround me, the availability of field work funding
and the just the generally intellectually stimulating atmosphere.