Benjamin graduated from the Australian National University in 2014 with a PhB in Linguistics, receiving First Class Honours and the University Medal. He was Lead RA on Sydney Speaks from 2014-2019 (with one year off in that time, while working in Tokyo, Japan). As Lead RA, Benjamin has worked in many capacities across both the 1970s and contemporary corpora, and has helped develop research methodologies. He has conducted investigations into methodologies for determining social class in these diverse, longitudinal data (Purser, Travis, Grama; ALS presentation, 2019), and on the use of the data for dialect coaching of Australian English over time (Purser, Grama, Travis, Voice and Speech Review, To Appear 2020). Based in Sydney, Benjamin continues to assist with Sydney Speaks, dividing his time between the project, his role as Senior Research Officer and tutor at Macquarie University, and his business as a dialect and voice coach in the performing arts industry.

Recent Publications

Benjamin Purser, James Grama, and Catherine Travis. 2020. "Australian English over time: Using sociolinguistic analysis to inform dialect coaching." Voice and Speech Review. 14 (3): 269-291. doi: 10.1080/23268263.2020.1750791.