The 2025 ASFLA Conference – SFL in Dialogue for a Dynamic Future

Dr Georgia Carr Research Fellow, General Practice Clinical School, The University of Sydney, New South Wales. 
Georgia Carr is Research Fellow in the Institute for Communication in Healthcare at the Australian National University and in the General Practice Clinical School at The University of Sydney. Her research is in functional linguistics, educational linguistics and health communication. In particular, her expertise is in discourse analysis, evaluative language and corpus linguistics, with a focus on sex education, health and media.

Dr Bradley A. Smith, PhD (Linguistics), BA Hons 1st Class (Linguistics), Macquarie University, New South Wales. 
Bradley Smith (PhD) has researched and taught on the phonology and discourse functions of intonation for twenty years, across various institutions in Australia and around the world, as well as on spoken and written discourse modes and multimodality. He is Honorary Associate (Research) at University of Sydney (Department of Linguistics) and teaches at UNSW (School of Education). He also produces an online YouTube course on intonation, Listening for Meaning, as Dr Semiosmith.

Professor Pauline Jones, Professor of Language in Education at the University of Wollongong.
Drawing on systemic functional linguistics and genre-based literacy pedagogy, Pauline has worked in teacher education and curriculum reform in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Her research focuses on understanding and supporting students’ literacy development and teacher professional learning, through a number of research projects around oral language, curriculum literacies, literacy transition points, and multimodality. Pauline is co-author (with Beverly Derewianka) of Teaching Language in Context (OUP) as well as numerous publications deriving from research undertaken in collaboration with the profession.

Professor Beverly Derewianka is an Emeritus Professor and Professorial Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia.
Beverly has worked in the field of Language and Literacy Education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. She has acted as consultant to curriculum bodies nationally and internationally and has worked with various education systems in developing whole school literacy programs. She has acted as consultant to various curriculum bodies nationally and internationally, contributing to policy design and assessment procedures. She has written a number of books for teachers based on her research into students’ literacy development. Her publications include Exploring How Texts Work, A Grammar Companion, School Discourse: Learning to Write across the Years of Schooling (with Frances Christie) and Teaching Language in Context (with Pauline Jones).

Dr Peter White, School of the Arts and Media, University of Sydney.
Dr Peter White is one of the principal architects of the Appraisal framework, an account of the means by which texts convey evaluative and attitudinal meanings. He is influential in the development of linguistics-based analyses of mass communicative discourse (journalism, politics, corporate communications, public relations and advertising) and in the contrastive analysis of journalism and political rhetoric across languages and cultures. Prior to undertaking academic study, Dr White worked as a journalist and journalism trainer for almost 20 years (Sydney Morning Herald, The Adelaide Advertiser, Special Broadcasting Service -SBS). He gained his PhD from the University of Sydney in 2000 and prior to teaching media studies, linguistics, discourse analysis and journalism at the University of New South Wales taught linguistics and journalism at the University of Adelaide, linguistics and English Language studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), journalism and media studies at the University of Wollongong and linguistics at the University of Sydney. He is also a semi-professional jazz musicians, currently performing on saxophone and keyboards with the Travelling Circumstances jazz combo.