Dr. Francesco De Toni

Professor

Build a Statement of Purpose

Generate a tailored SOP for Dr. Francesco De Toni. Improve your application with a focused, well-structured draft.

Biography

Francesco De Toni is a linguist affiliated with the International Space Centre and a researcher at the University of Western Australia. He completed his PhD at the University of Western Australia, focusing on Italian and Spanish historical linguistics and exploring how language maintains personal and political friendships through letter writing in colonial Australia. His postdoctoral project, funded by the Marie-Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship, investigates the evolution of emotional expression in the Italian language over the past 250 years. This work combines corpus linguistics and computational linguistics with theoretical approaches to pragmatics and systemic functional linguistics. Additionally, he leads projects on health communication, utilizing qualitative methods to improve health-related communication in various Australian communities. His research interests include pragmatics, healthcare communication, computational linguistics, language change, and the intersection of language and emotions. In the past, he has collaborated with researchers across multiple disciplines, contributing to significant projects like BigScience, which focuses on developing large-scale machine-learning models for natural language processing. De Toni has taught various courses on Italian studies and narrative medicine at UWA.

Research Interests

Experience

Researcher

— Present

International Space Centre • Perth

Conducting research in various linguistic areas.

Research Fellow

— Present

Australian National University • Canberra

Studying the impact of healthcare communication on health literacy and outcomes.

Senior Project Officer

— Present

Western Australian Department of Health • Perth

Leading the implementation of voice-to-text digital scribes for clinical documentation.

Awards

#

Research Collaboration Award

#

Education Futures Scholarship

#

PhD Top-Up Scholarship, ARC Centre of History of Emotions

#

Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship

Courses

BMED 3001 - Narrative Medicine ITAL1401 - Italian Studies 1 ITAL1402 - Italian Studies 2 ITAL1403 - Italian Studies 3 ITAL1404 - Italian Studies 4 ITAL3813 - Linguistic History of Italy

Requirements for University of Western Australia

Master Program
Requirements
GPA Requirement
Required:2.8
IELTS
Listening
Required:6
Reading
Required:6
Writing
Required:6
Speaking
Required:6
Overall
Required:6.5
TOEFL
Listening
Required:20
Reading
Required:20
Writing
Required:22
Speaking
Required:20
Total
Required:82
Prerequisites
Bachelor degree in a relevant field Personal Statement Curriculum Vitae
Application Checklist
  • Academic Transcripts
  • English Language Proficiency Proof
  • Personal Statement
  • References
  • Proof of Identity
Specialization Notes

Requirements are standardized across the Graduate School for most Master by Coursework programs at UWA.