Meena C. Debashish is an Associate Professor in the Department of Phonetics and Spoken English, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. She completed her PhD in the area of Phonetics from CIEFL (now EFLU). From 2002-2005, she worked as a research assistant to Prof. William Greaves and Prof. Jim Benson (Glendon University, Canada) on the Bonobo-Human Research Project. In 2006, she was awarded research grants to work with the bonobo team on the Forgiveness Project, part of the Great Ape Trust Project, IOWA, the results of which were published in Functional Dimensions of Ape-Human Discourse (Benson and Greaves (eds.) (2005)). In 2007, she joined the Department of Phonetics & Spoken English, as a faculty member. She is specialized in the teaching/training of the Systemic Functional approach to the study of speech, and has conducted workshops at international conferences, both abroad, in Australia (ISFC, 2005), Hong Kong (MUST5, 2013) and China (ISFC, 2013; ISFC, 2022), and in India (ICEG – VI, IX, XI, XII).

The broad field of Dr. Debashish’s research interest includes the interrelations of phonetics, intonation, grammar, and discourse. She has specialized in the study of speech sound, including the Indian varieties of English, and has researched and taught over many years on the intonation of English.