Rate My Professor Bill Palmer

Professor Bill Palmer is Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science and Linguistics Discipline Lead in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences, College of Human and Social Futures, at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He holds a PhD and a Master of Arts from the University of Sydney. His career history includes lectureships at the University of Leeds (2003-2004), University of New South Wales (2002), University of Melbourne (2001), University of Western Sydney (2000), University of the South Pacific, Pacific Languages Unit, Vanuatu (1997-1999), and University of Sydney (1993-1997), prior to joining the University of Newcastle in 2008 as Lecturer and advancing to Professor. Palmer also serves as National President of the Australian Linguistics Society and Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project OzSpace: Landscape, language and culture in Indigenous Australia.

Palmer's research specializations include spatial language and spatial cognition, particularly spatial frames of reference, linguistic typology, syntax, phonology, Austronesian and Papuan languages, Indigenous languages of Australia, and documentation of endangered languages. He has obtained $2,133,070 in research funding across 28 grants, including lead investigator on ARC Discovery Projects OzSpace ($457,831, 2020), Thinking and talking about atolls ($312,767, 2012), and Endangered Languages Documentation, Theory and Application ($90,000, 2014), as well as contributions to the Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia ($472,543, 2023). He has supervised 14 completed PhD theses on topics such as grammars of Pacific and Australian languages and one current PhD. Key publications comprise edited books The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guinea Area: A Comprehensive Guide (2018) and The Languages and Linguistics of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific: A Comprehensive Guide (2017); monograph Kokota Grammar (2009); and journal articles including 'Frames of spatial reference in five Australian languages' (Spatial Cognition and Computation, 2021), 'How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography' (Linguistic Typology, 2017), 'Topography in language: Absolute frame of reference and the topographic correspondence hypothesis' (Language Structure and Environment, 2015), 'Heads in Oceanic indirect possession' (Oceanic Linguistics, 2007), and 'An innovated possessor suffix and category in central Choiseul' (Oceanic Linguistics, 2014).