James is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics and ARC DECRA Research Fellow at Charles Darwin University and an honorary lecturer at the Australian National University.

Research

His research focuses particularly around language documentation and description; community-led language revitalisation and maintenance practices; and interfaces between grammatical structure and meaning (morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics). He has expertise in community-driven linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative data analysis, and culturally-responsive research design, founded on long-term collaborative partnerships with First Nations communities of western and northern Australia. His work in this space involves a strong emphasis on capacity building, participatory methodologies, and advocacy, in order to align with and support community-driven goals.

Current and recent research projects include:

• DE260101529 'Designing peacemaking programs with First Nations languages and communities' (ARC DECRA Project) 2026-2029: examining mediation, negotiation and  peacemaking processes in First Nations communities, and the language practices that underpin them;
• ‘Badimia Guwaga First Nations Language Education’ (Commonwealth Department of Education/First Languages Australia FNLE Grant) 2025-27 (with K Rahman, G Passmore, C Kelly, G Fogarty, J Green, Bundiyarra - Irra Wangga Language Centre): building language capacity in the community by co-facilitating on-Country and online language learning and developing community-led language learning/teaching resources;
• 'Top End Languages Forum' (AIATSIS funding) 2025-26 (with R Herdman, P Puruntatameri, J Manmurulu, I Gumbula): a forum for First Nations language advocates to discuss and advance their goals and ambitions for their languages and draft the ‘Top End Strong Languages Statement';
• 'Formal/Experimental Methods and In-depth Description of Australian Indigenous Languages' (FEMIDAL) (IRP CNRS Grant) 2021-2025 (with P Caudal et al): comparative, typological and descriptive linguistic research with a focus on the semantics of tense, aspect, modality and event structure in Top End Australian languages;
• 'Mathematics in Indigenous Languages' (MiIL) (CDU CSFP Grant) 2021-2024 (with C Edmonds-Wathen and Groote Eylandt Bickerton Island Primary College Aboriginal Corporation (GEBIPCAC): expressing mathematical concepts in First Nations languages for teaching and learning in school contexts, particularly considering topics of geometric shape and spatial expression;
• 'Methods for monolingual encyclopedic and lexicographic descriptions' (CoEDL GFS Grant) 2021-2022 (with the Groote Eylandt Language Centre): using storytelling, riddle-making and language games for lexical and encyclopedic knowledge collection.

Teaching

James' teaching spans areas of general linguistics, language revitalisation & maintenance and language education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

He is Course Coordinator of the Diploma of First Nations Language Work (YFLW01), a flexible and culturally-responsive program in languages, linguistics and language teaching for First Nations students, offered in workshop-mode block delivery.

Visit James' personal website for more about current projects, downloadable papers and other information.