Humanities and Social Sciences
Prof. Ulrike Zeshan OBE
Director, International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
Abstract: This presentation reports on in-progress work of a collaborative UK-Indian research project. The project aims to find new ways to improve English literacy for young deaf adults who are functionally illiterate but are proficient users of Indian Sign Lang uage (ISL). Our approach uses peer education, that is, deaf ISL users teaching other deaf ISL users, in combination with online resources on an English language learning platform.
This is a cross-sectoral project that involves academics from the areas of applied linguistics, s ign language linguistics, and ethnography, a team of deaf research assistants and peer tutors from the Indian Deaf Community, and five deaf-run NGOs in different parts of India. It is also a project that aims at systemic change, where curriculum development, the objective of literacy acquisition, and the roles of learners and teachers are reconfigured, in effect creating a new ecosystem of learning.
Such work has implications for thinking about multi-stakeholder partnerships, processes of reiterative prototyping, and the relationship between research and implementation. Thus the presentation will be of interest across disciplines.
About the Speaker: Ulrike Zeshan is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics and Director of the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS) at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK. After her PhD in linguistics from the University of Cologne, she worked at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Melbourne and then headed the Sign Language Typology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. Her research is grounded in many years of fieldwork, particularly in India and in Turkey, and her current areas of interest include sign language typology, sign multilingualism, sign language endangerment, and applied sign linguistics. She is also involved in curriculum and materials development together with NGOs, academics, and governmental departments serving deaf communities in several countries of the Global South. Prof. Zeshan is Director of the International Deaf Empowerment Foundation (iDEF) and editor-in-chief of the Ishara Press, a social enterprise under the iDEF. In 2014, she was elected to the Academia Europaea (European Academy of Sciences), and in 2015, she was awarded an Honorary OBE under the Queen's Honours' scheme, for "services to Higher Education and international deaf communities".
