A University of Queensland linguistics professor who specialises in the documentation and revitalisation of Australia's First Nations languages has been named a 2025 Fulbright Senior Scholar.
Professor Felicity Meakins from UQ's School of Languages and Cultures will travel to California Institute of Technology in the United States as part of the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research into First Nations navigational systems and their potential links to the geomagnetic field.
"My Fulbright research will investigate whether Australia's First Nations people have the ability to detect the earth's magnetic field as a result of sophisticated navigational practices deeply encoded in First Languages," Professor Meakins said.
"This work on magneto-reception brings linguistics and science to the task of describing one of the extraordinary abilities of First Peoples in Australia."
Professor Meakins said that unlike sight, sound, smell and other senses, the magneto-reception sense in humans is not well understood.
"There is some evidence that humans can passively detect the earth's magnetic field, but our research aims to show that some groups of humans can consciencely perceive the magnetic field due to longstanding connections to Country expressed through highly complex navigational language," she said.
Professor Meakins has spent two decades documenting Indigenous languages and said her time in the US would be an important interdisciplinary exchange.
"I'm honoured to work alongside Caltech's Professor Joseph Kirschvink and Professor Shin Shimojo on this project," she said.
"Professor Kirschvink is a geologist, while Professor Shimojo's background is in experimental psychology.
"Indigenous Knowledges are not as siloed as western science so the time spent at Caltech will be invaluable for working out how a linguist, experimental psychologist and geologist can break out of our discipline areas to approach Indigenous Knowledges with the same level of interdisciplinarity."
UQ alumni Jason Goopy (Bachelor of Education (secondary) '07, Bachelor of Music '07, Master of Music '09 and Doctor of Philosophy '20) and Emma Tait (Bachelor of Education (Primary) '18) were also awarded with a Fulbright Scholar Award and Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship respectively.
UQ School of Music alum Jason Goopy will use his scholarship to further his research on music education's transformative impact on youth wellbeing at Columbia University.
Emma Tait, who is now a rural teacher in Queensland, will study a Master of Educational Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship at Harvard University, to enhance her capacity as a leader and educator at Queensland state schools.
The Fulbright Scholarship Program gives Australian researchers the opportunity to take part in an academic and cultural exchange at a US institution.
