Congratulations to Madeleine Clews

The ESU warmly congratulates Madeleine Clews, runner-up for the 2025 Major Project Grant.

Madeleine will use the Grant to support her research into Seeds of Australian English using manuscript letters written in Australia during the second half of the 19th century.

Madeleine has provided this summary of her project: ‘Australian English (AusE), now recognised as a distinctive variety among World Englishes, evolved in the late 18th and 19th centuries. This project will help fill a temporal and geographic gap in understanding how this variety took shape in the “Late Modern English” era, through curating a library of personal correspondence written in Australia between 1850 and 1901. Creating such a digitally searchable collection will enable linguists, social historians and others with an interest in this era to gain a better understanding of what was happening linguistically in this part of the world.’

We look forward to hearing more as this important project develops.

This page was created on 14 April 2025.