Research Students - Discipline of Linguistics and Languages

Thinking of applying to be a research student?

We welcome applications from students wishing to complete an MA or PhD in Linguistics or Applied Linguistics. The route to a research degree is generally through a taught Postgraduate Diploma. Please see the relevant pages for further details of the taught programmes.

Look through our priority research areas to see which types of project we particularly encourage. You might also like to look through the profiles of current and former research students below.
Look at the profiles of staff members in Linguistics and Languages, to identify a potential supervisor in your area of interest, and find out more about their own research. Get in touch with them via email to discuss your interests at least one semester before you hope to begin your research programme.
Through informal discussions with a potential supervisor (usually involving at least one face-to-face or zoom meeting), you will shape your ideas into a research proposal. This process can take up to six months.
Submit a completed application for admission (postgraduate), which includes your research proposal, along with a CV, transcripts and other important documents. Please check that you enclose all the necessary documents when applying and ensure you submit your application well before the deadline.

If you are an English teacher who would prefer to do an MA by coursework (without a research component), you may be interested in the MA in English Language Teaching & Leadership. See the postgraduate taught programme pages for further details.

Research programmes in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

MA by Supervised Research Project

This is the most common route to obtaining an MA in Linguistics or Applied Linguistics, as it combines two further 400-level courses after completion of the PG Diploma (including the research methods course) with a ‘shorter’ research thesis (of approximately 20,000 words). The two 400-level courses may come from Linguistics or another approved discipline that is relevant to the research interests.

The MA by SRP can be completed in 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time (following completion of the PG Diploma).

Students must have completed a relevant PG Diploma at USP, usually with a GPA of 3.0 or above, in order to enrol in the MA by Supervised Research Project. In addition, they must have a viable research proposal and an available supervisor able to take them on.

MA by Thesis

Students who wish to pursue a more in-depth study at Master’s level may enrol in the MA by thesis, in either Linguistics or Applied Linguistics, which is examined by a thesis of up to 50,000 words.

The MA by thesis can be completed in 2 years full-time or 4 years part-time.

Students must usually complete a PG Diploma at USP (or equivalent from another university), with a GPA 3.0 or above, before enrolling in the MA by thesis. In addition, they must have a viable research proposal and an available supervisor able to take them on.

PhD

High-scoring students who have successfully completed a Master’s in either Linguistics or Applied Linguistics may have the opportunity to continue to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). This degree is examined by a thesis of up to 100,000 words and an oral defence.

To be accepted for a PhD programme, students must have:

completed an MA that contains a research component (SRP or thesis) or completed a Directed Research Project (DRP) in lieu of this requirement.
written an outstanding research proposal for a study, in collaboration with a research supervisor who confirms their availability and willingness to supervise the project.

Current research students

	Tupou Ratuva Singh is working on a PhD in Linguistics. She is exploring the linguistic choices that multilingual families make when raising their children. She is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans and Dr Akevai Nicholas.
	*Peter Sasabule* has been awarded a PSERI scholarship to pursue his MA by thesis in Linguistics. He is conducting language documentation of his own language, Roviana from the New Georgia region of the Western Solomon Islands. Via elicitation with native speakers of the language, his thesis examines three domains, specifically; Vetu (traditional house), Tomoko (war canoe) and seke-batu (ritualistic headhunting) that were recorded and documented in the J H L Waterhouse 1928 dictionary but that are now considered to be undergoing attrition. He is supervised by Dr Candide Simard.
	*Sandhya Kumari* is working on her PhD in Linguistics. She has been awarded an N-POC PhD Scholarship for her project titled “Displacement past and future: Documenting the ocean knowledge in the language of the Rabi Island (Banabans), Kiribati (Gilbertese) and Tuvalu (Nui) speakers and constructing resilient and sustainable island nations”. Her study builds on the work conducted for her MA research on lexical variation between the languages spoken on Rabi Island and in Kiribati. She is supervised by Dr Apolonia Tamata.
	*Evangeline Christina Narayan* is working on her PhD in Applied Linguistics, investigating the way children in lower primary levels in Fiji acquire the language of Mathematics, recognising that this is typically done through a second language, English. She is audio-recording class discussion in classrooms from Years 1 to 4, and then conducting follow-up interviews with target children from the classes. She analyses all transcripts to examine the usage of Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), following the work of Jim Cummins, and attempts to contextualise this language development within a socio-culturally appropriate pedagogy, following Russell Bishop and others. She is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans and Dr Sashi Sharma.
	*Rajendra Prasad* is carrying out research for his PhD in Linguistics. He is analysing Fiji Hindi verb phrases as his main focus, using a corpus elicited from speakers of the language. He is supervised by Dr Candide Simard.
	Tiito Kaeka is investigating lexical variation in different dialects of the Kiribati language for this MA by SRP in Linguistics. He is collecting data with the aid of picture stimuli from six of the seventeen islands of the Kiribati group of the Kiribati Islands. He is supervised by Dr Candide Simard.
	*Losalini Rokosuli* is enrolled in the research component of her MA by SRP in Linguistics. She investigates the semantics of navigation in different dialects of the Fijian Language. Her methods include observations during talanoa sessions, together with the use of an already existent glossary that was compiled during the ‘Navigating the Weather Project’ (NaWa). The terms found will then be used in interviews and talanoa sessions with elders to elicit further information. She is supervised by Dr Candide Simard.
	*Elizabeth Fifita* is investigating pedagogical translanguaging in a Tongan classroom. Given that Tonga currently follows an early-exit transitional policy in which the medium of instruction shifts from Tongan to English in the later stages of primary school, Elizabeth examines how the two languages are used in the classroom for different purposes during Grade 4, attempting to see how the policy plays out in practice. Her MA by SRP is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans.
	*Reuben Tarihehe* is using his MA by SRP in Applied Linguistics to investigate the way Vanuatu’s vernacular language policy plays out in three primary schools on West Ambae. He tests the language proficiency of the Year 1-4 children in each of West Ambae, Bislama and English; he observes the way the different languages are used in the classroom; and he conducts talanoa with the teachers and wider community about the value of vernacular education. He is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans.
	*Ariteti Botibara* is focusing her MA by SRP in Applied Linguistics on the way the revised English curriculum materials are implemented in Year 7 and 9 classrooms in a junior secondary school in South Tarawa, Kiribati. She uses ‘think-aloud protocols’ to understand how teachers plan their lessons, then observes those lesson to see how the plans come to life, and then conducts reflective interviews with the same teachers about those lessons. The study emerges from her own professional role working as a curriculum development officer in the Curriculum Unit. She is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans.
	*Hancy Mahuri* is studying under a PSERI scholarship for an MA in Linguistics. She investigates multilingual education in Vanuatu, using a case study of primary schools on Pentecost Island, going beneath the opinions, attitudes and beliefs to ask: What is actually happening inside the classrooms? She is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans.
	John Mamani is working on a Directed Research Project that investigates language use in the primary classrooms of the Solomon Islands. He plans to use video recorded data from one classroom in Honiara to develop an analytic framework through which a much larger data set can later be analysed as a full PhD study. His interests are in multilingualism and code-switching, and how these phenomena play out in education. He is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans.
	Lyric Williams is focusing her MA by SRP on listener attitudes towards various accents heard at the University of the South Pacific. She is supervised by Dr Fiona Willans and Dr Micah Ahmad.

Former research students

Research theses completed in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics since 2000

Year	Student	Programme	Theses	Supervisor
2025	Roshila Singh	PhD Applied Linguistics	Academic literacies and English language support practices of lecturers at the University of the South Pacific: a case study of English medium Instruction	Dr Fiona Willans
2025	Jim Gure	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Lexical innovations in Raga, Vanuatu	Dr Marie-France Duhamel
2024	Yogita Mala	MA (SRP) Linguistics	‘Who says what?’ Genderlects in Fiji Hindi on a popular Radio Navtarang programme	Dr Candide Simard
2024	Pritima Singh	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Attitudes towards Fiji Hindi, Shudh Hindi and English via a matched guise test	Dr Nikhat Shameem
2024	Sandhya Kumari	MA Linguistics	Lexical variation in the Kiribati and Banaban dialects	Dr Candide Simard
2024	Tupou Ratuva Singh	MA Applied Linguistics	How learners in Years 5 to 8 in Fiji acquire (or don’t acquire) verb forms in English: A systematic analysis of learner writing	Dr Fiona Willans Dr Candide Simard
2024	Virendra Prasad	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Phonetic variation and convergence of Hindi-speaking users of English in Suva Fiji, Fiji’s northern region, and India	Dr Candide Simard
2024	Purnima Din	MA (SRP) Applied Linguistics	Dynamics of teacher feedback discourse in English as a Second Language students’ academic essays in Ba secondary schools, Fiji Islands	Dr Nikhat Shameem
2023	Shaleshni Prasad	MA Applied Linguistics	Improving the oral English fluency of students at the University of the South Pacific: A case study of English for Academic Purposes students studying in face-to-face mode at Lautoka Campus	Dr Fiona Willans Dr Robert Early
2023	Vimal Kumar	MA (SRP) Applied Linguistics	Readability and Lexical Coverage of Texts: An Analysis of EMI Texts in the Fiji Context	Dr Fiona Willans
2023	Sadia Shainaaz	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Language attitudes of Indo-Fijian mothers and their children towards English, Fiji Hindi and Shudh Hindi	Dr Nikhat Shameem
2021	Svetlana Kiseleva Afuhaˈamango	MA Linguistics	Uniqueness of emphatic possessives in Tongan	Dr Candide Simard
2021	Evangeline Narayan	MA (SRP) Applied Linguistics	In search of principles of second language acquisition in the design and unpacking of Fiji’s English syllabus	Dr Fiona Willans
2021	Bhagirati Bhan	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Codeswitching between Standard Hindi and Fiji Hindi (in formal religious settings in Navua)	Dr Candide Simard
2020	Wilfred Fimone	MA Linguistics	Variation and change of glottal stop deletion in Rotuman	Prof Miriam Meyerhoff, Dr Fiona Willans, Dr Paul Geraghty
2018	Romina Singh	MA Linguistics	Sketch grammar and sociolinguistic topics in Bua Fiji Hindi	Dr Paul Geraghty, Dr Fiona Willans, Dr Robert Early
2018	Lose Jenner Helu	MA Linguistics	Talanoa Ki Uvea: Translations and commentary (A linguistic analysis of evidence of Uvean influence on Tonga)	Dr Robert Early
2017	Alice Aluta Rore	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Grammar sketch of Sulagwalu	Dr Paul Geraghty Dr Robert Early
2017	Rajendra Prasad	MA (SRP) Linguistics	Grammar sketch of Nasinu Fiji Hindi	Dr Paul Geraghty Prof Jeff Siegel
2016	Carol Aru	MA Linguistics	A short grammar of Duidui: A language of West Ambae in Northern Vanuatu	Dr Robert Early
2015	Zakia Chand	PhD Linguistics	Language learning strategies of Fiji students and correlations with academic language proficiency	Dr Robert Early Dr Rajni Chand
2013	Ana Kitolelei	MA Linguistics	The Fijian of part-Europeans: a case study of Wainunu-i-caxe	Dr Paul Geraghty
2013	David Healey	PhD Linguistics	A grammar of Maskelynes: the language of Uluveu island, Vanuatu	Prof John Lynch Dr Robert Early
2012	Barbara Gillian Green	PhD Linguistics	Pacific English: what is it, why is it and its implications	Dr France Mugler Dr Robert Early
2011	Hannah Vari-Bogiri	PhD Linguistics	Phonology and morpho-syntax of Raga, Vanuatu	Dr Robert Early
2009	Sébastien Lacrampe	MA Linguistics	Possession in Lelepa, a language of Central Vanuatu	Dr Robert Early
2008	Roshila Singh	MA Linguistics	Language Use for Interethnic Communication among Urban Fijians and Indo-Fijians in Suva strengthening ties for a Common Identity	Dr France Mugler
2007	Setsuko Wakabayashi	PhD Linguistics	FL Listening comprehension	Dr Patrick Griffiths Dr France Mugler
2007	Apolonia Tamata	PhD Linguistics	The Glottal Stop in Nasorowaqa Fijian and other Oceanic Languages	Dr Paul Geraghty
2005	Mohammed Sameer	MA Linguistics	Teacher talk in Fijian English classrooms	Dr France Mugler
2001	Jane Kanas	MA Linguistics	Tu kaen Bislama? Wan lukluk long nasonal langwis blong Vanuatu blong soem se i gat tu kaen Bislama we ol i toktok long hem long Vila taon	Prof John Lynch