Charles Kemp

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February 18, 2026

How to make specialists’ fees fair? It’ll take more than a revamped website

Yuting Zhang, The University of Melbourne; Charles Kemp, The University of Melbourne, and Stephen Duckett, The University of Melbourne

Knowing in advance what your specialist will charge is a good step forward. But we need fairer fees to start with.

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April 11, 2025

Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages

Charles Kemp, The University of Melbourne; Ekaterina Vylomova, The University of Melbourne; Temuulen Khishigsuren, The University of Melbourne, and Terry Regier, University of California, Berkeley

Can you guess which languages score the highest for terms relating to ‘love’, ‘death’, ‘canoe’ or ‘sheep’? We made a tool to help you explore our extensive dataset.

Raychan on Unsplash

December 14, 2022

Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it’s getting increasingly complex

Piers Kelly, University of New England; Charles Kemp, The University of Melbourne, and James Winters, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique

The extraordinary Chinese writing system has over 4,000 core complex characters – and they’ve been getting more complex over time.

The Milky Way: a pattern of stars, or a pattern of gaps? Luke Busellato/Wikimedia Commons

August 16, 2019

Why do different cultures see such similar meanings in the constellations?

Simon Cropper, The University of Melbourne; Charles Kemp, The University of Melbourne; Daniel R. Little, The University of Melbourne, and Duane Hamacher, The University of Melbourne

Around the world and throughout history, we find remarkably similar constellations defined by disparate cultures, as well as strikingly similar narratives describing the relationships between them.

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