Dr Nick Evans

Nicholas Evans is an anthropological linguist specialising in the indigenous languages of New Guinea and Australia - especially Kayardild (Bentinck Island, Queensland), in Arnhem Land Bininj Kunwok and Dalabon, and in the Croker/Coburg Peninsula region Ilgar and Iwaidja. He taught linguistics at the School of Australian Linguistics in Batchelor (1985-1987), the University of Melbourne (1988-2007), the University of Cologne (1997-1998) and the Australian National University (ANU) (2008-2026), where he is now Emeritus Professor of Linguistics. From 2014-2022 he directed the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (CoEDL). He has worked on the ways language plays a role in music, art and as evidence in Native Title Claims, this is explored in his book "Words of Wonder: What Endangered Languages Tell Us". Having recently retired from his academic position at the ANU he is now keen to devote his energies and experience to more community-oriented projects, particularly dictionary-making, language revival, and ways of making the depth of traditional story-telling, song and ecological knowledge available to younger generations of speakers. From October 2026 he will be involved in projects working with the Dalabon and Iwaidja language groups.