INVESTIGATOR READERS
MARK NEWBROOK
Mark Newbrook was born near Liverpool
(UK)
in 1956. His first degree was in Classics (from Oxford) and he moved on
to study Linguistics at the University of Reading, obtaining his PhD in
1982.
He has taught and researched
in
Singapore,
Hong Kong, Perth and since 1990 at Monash University in Melbourne,
where
he is a Senior Lecturer. His main fields of expertise are dialectology,
historical linguistics and of late 'skeptical linguistics', the
application
of skeptical methods to 'fringe' or controversial ideas about language
(and to apparently dubious aspects of mainstream linguistics).
Mark has been interested in
non-standard
theories since his teens. His non-linguistic skeptical interests are
many,
but the two main ones are cryptozoology and non-standard accounts of
ancient
history/prehistory (the latter often links in with aspects of his
skeptical
linguistics, such as non-standard claims about ancient languages and
scripts).
His other interests include
philosophy
(especially
the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion), history,
science
(especially astronomy and palaeontology), science fiction and fantasy,
'heritage tourism', rugby league (he was active in starting the game at
Oxford and is now a Melbourne Storm member), cricket, Australian Rules
football, music, beer, etc.
(Investigator 75, 2000
November)