Rate My Professor Mark Harvey

Mark Harvey is a Conjoint Associate Professor in Linguistics within the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, part of the Faculty of Education and Arts. He holds a PhD from the University of Sydney, as well as a Master of Arts and a Bachelor of Arts from the Australian National University. Harvey joined the University of Newcastle in July 1994 as an Associate Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science, advancing to Lecturer from January 1999 to December 2006, and Senior Lecturer from July 2007. He has been a member of the Australian Linguistic Society since 1981. Throughout his over 30-year career, he has focused extensively on Aboriginal social organisation, landscape constructions, kinship, and clan systems.

A member of the Faculty of Education and Arts' Endangered Language Documentation, Theory and Application research group, Harvey's work spans descriptive linguistic research—including grammars, dictionaries in paper and digital formats, supervision of an online dictionary, and digitisation of 72 hours of Gulumoerrgin audio—theoretical linguistic research on historical linguistics, complex predicate and word structures, and relationships among languages of central north and north-west Australia, and anthropological research on Aboriginal social organisation and land ownership. From 2001 to 2006, he produced 11 publications (two A1, six B1, five C1), served as Chief Investigator on an ARC Discovery Grant (2005-2007) and an Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Research Grant (2003), consulted for the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority and Northern Land Council, and was seconded to the Yirra Bandoo Aboriginal Corporation to prepare Gulumoerrgin language materials funded by an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission grant. His major publications include books such as Proto-Australian: Reconstruction of a Common Ancestor Language (2024), Complex Predicates: Cross-linguistic Perspectives on Event Structure (2010, co-edited with M. Amberber and B. Baker), A Grammar of Gaagudju (2002), A Grammar of Limilngan (2001), and Proto Mirndi (2008); chapters like Language and Population Shift in Pre-Colonial Australia (2020) and Disputation, Kinship and Land Tenure in Western Arnhem Land (2018); and journal articles including The Kaytetye Segmental Inventory (2023, Australian Journal of Linguistics), The Larrakia Kinship Terminology: Asymmetrical Cross-Cousin Marriage and Omaha Skewing (2023, Oceania), The Wagiman Landscape: Mental Maps and Prototypes (2022, Oceania), and Complex Predication and Adverbial Modification in Wagiman (2021, Australian Journal of Linguistics). Harvey's contributions have advanced the documentation, analysis, and theoretical understanding of Australian Indigenous languages and cultural systems.