Pam Peters

Biography

Pam Peters is an Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University – where she held a Personal Chair in Linguistics until retiring in 2007. She was Director of Macquarie University’s Dictionary Research Centre (2001-07), and a member of the Editorial Committee of the Macquarie Dictionary (1986-2006). She continues on the editorial boards of English World-Wide, English Today, and the ICAME Journal. In other professional roles, she served from 1996-2024 on the ABC’s Language Committee (formerly SCOSE), as a Distinguished Editor of Australia’s Institute of Professional Editors, and contributed 6 chapters to the Australian Government Style Manual (6^th ed. 2002). She led the compilation of reference corpora of Australian English (ACE, ICE and ART) for researching Australian English usage. Her major monographs are Cambridge Guide to Australian Style (1996), Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (2007), and their international counterpart, her Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) – its revised second edition to be published in 2026. Her current research interests are varieties of English in the Indo-Pacific (the VEIP project endorsed by the Union Academique Internationale), and the readability of health messaging for the general public, along with creating online termbanks in cancer medicine (HealthTermFinder), family law (LawTermFinder), and building and construction (ArchiTermFinder).