Australasian Humour Studies Network Award-Winning Paper : Marie Carlier

32nd Annual Conference of the Australasian Humour Studies Research Network, 11-13 February 2026, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Marie Carlier is a Belgian PhD candidate in her final year. She holds a Bachelor’s in Languages and letters, and a Master’s in Human Resources, where she first explored humour in the workplace. After three years in HR, she chose to return to university during the pandemic to teach and conduct research. Her current work continues to examine humour in professional settings, specifically in police departments. 

Abstract Title: Humour in the Police Workplace: Discursive Practices, Collective Identity, and Negotiating Boundaries University Affiliation: UCLouvain, Belgium (Iacchos), and University of Canterbury (School of Language, Social and Political Science), Christchurch, as a visiting researcher

Conference Theme: Difficult Conversations (or, the Brouhaha in Aotearoa) Humour studies is one of the most well-established and successful examples of interdisciplinary scholarship. Drawing on the work of scholars in fields as diverse as psychology, linguistics, folklore, literary studies, history, media and communication, and sociology, the study of humour brings together multiple traditions and disciplines to better understand the complex nature of humour across multiple contexts. Underneath the surface, though, trouble lurks. Those who have been around the field long enough are likely to have heard the pointed conference questions, received the unexpectedly hostile peer reviews, or taken part in the whispered conversations. While we in humour studies have a long and productive history of working alongside one another, we perhaps have not always worked with one another or sought to learn from one another in genuine ways. The differences have tended to be overlooked in favour of solidarity. However, we think that the time has come to talk more openly and collegially about what humour is and how we study it. For this conference, we would like contributors to (politely and constructively) ask the difficult questions, have the awkward conversations, and maybe even engage in some reflection about the limitations and problems with their own approaches the studying humour, in the service of building a field where we are better equipped to learn from, work with, and sometimes disagree with one another. We invite proposals that address the frictions and fault lines, openly ask the questions, and reflect upon their own scholarly methods and theories. We especially welcome collaborative panels framed as conversations between different disciplines, subdisciplines, methods, and theories.