The education and training of doctoral students is one of the most important aspects of a university's activities. The pursuit of knowledge through research higher degree programs not only leads to a well-educated society and a highly trained professional work force, but also contributes significantly to the University's research and scholarship. The aim of the PhD program is to provide research training in a manner that fosters the development of independent research skills in candidates. Linguistics Linguistics research in the School looks into the nature of language as a manifestation of human cognition and social interaction, and the use of language to achieve social action, social identities and interpersonal relationships. It includes theoretical and empirical studies of language structure and meaning, studies of language change, language documentation and description, and the pragmatics of language and interaction in cross-cultural and institutional settings. It is concentrated around three subthemes, Linguistic structure, meaning and change; Discourse and interaction; and Australian Indigenous languages. Second Language Studies The area of Second Language Studies includes research into how second languages are learned, taught and used. Second language acquisition is a complex behaviour that involves the knowledge of linguistic, cognitive, social and cultural elements of the target language and the skill to exploit this knowledge in real-time performance. This research area examines second language acquisition in the classroom, with a particular focus on identifying the conditions responsible for successful learning outcomes, as well as on the characterisation and measurement of language proficiency. Second language use in interpersonal and social contexts is also investigated. Studies in Culture Through the scholarly analysis of many different kinds of cultural products, texts and phenomena, Studies in Culture brings together researchers who seek to understand how the world is understood differently by people coming from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Researchers in this cluster work on literature, film, music, theatre, the visual arts, intangible heritage, testimonies and historical narratives. Research in Studies in Culture within the School centres around four broad sub-themes of Heritage, memory and trauma studies; Intellectual and cultural history; Literature; and Film and visual cultures. Translation and Interpreting Research in Translation and Interpreting is centred on two subthemes of Theoretical and practice-based research and Creative work. There is an extensive cohort of practice-based research, such as research on public sign translation, subtitle translation, community translation, translation checking, online interpreting, online interpreting training and testing, liaison interpreting, and sign language interpreting. There is also research on various issues of translation and interpreting pedagogy.