iSLanDS is excited to report that the next SIGN conference, SIGN10, will take place in Trinidad & Tobago from Monday 9 to Friday 12 December 2024. More information about the conference, including the keynote presenters and the Scientific Committee, can be found at the SIGN10 website: https://sites.google.com/view/sign10/home Nick Palfreyman announces the location of the SIGN10 conference. The SIGN10 conference covers topics related to sign languages and deaf communities, such as sign language rights, recognition and laws sign languages in education sign languages and linguistics deaf st ..read more

Why did the creolist, the sign language linguist and the typologist go to Preston? To attend our CrossMoGram workshop, of course! Last week we were delighted to welcome experts to our cross-modal workshop, where we discussed the outcomes of the first, conceptual stage of our project Cross-modal perspectives on grammaticalisation: Aspect markers in creoles and sign languages (CrossMoGram). We invited three sign language linguists, two creolists and a language typologist to join us for discussions about our plans for measuring how creoles and sign languages change. The experts who joined us for ..read more

A reminder that our online event with visitors from the Caribbean will take place tomorrow (Saturday 13 May) online only from 10am-1pm. The event features presentations given by deaf researchers from Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. The languages of the event are British Sign Language, International Sign and English. To receive a Zoom link for the event, simply register using this link. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow, if you can make it! If you live in Preston, or nearby, why not join us for a drink in the afternoon at The Guild pub on Fylde Road (postcode PR1 2XQ) from ..read more

We are delighted to report that our deaf project collaborators Andre Witter, Yarett Pineiro Rodriguez and Ian Dhanoolal are coming to the UK in May. Since our Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN) project began in February, we have been busy getting the project off the ground and supporting the core team. As one of our key project milestones, Yarett Pineiro Rodriguez (from Puerto Rico), Ian Dhanoolal (Trinidad & Tobago) and Andre Witter (Jamaica) are due to come to Preston for a series of project activities from 8-18 May, along with project co-investigator Dr. Ben Braithwaite. The Deaf ..read more

On Friday 3 February we launched an exciting two-year project with the aim of establishing a Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN). Supported by the University of the West Indies and backed by £100,000 of Arts and Humanities Research Council funding, the project will support three deaf academics to produce research on how to make language policy work for deaf communities in the Caribbean: Andre Witter is a deaf community leader from Jamaica with experience of youth activism, who is currently working to create a dictionary of Jamaican Sign Language. Yarett Pineiro Rodriguez is an education ..read more

Today saw the launch of our new three-year project, Cross-modal perspectives on grammaticalisation: Aspect markers in creoles and sign languages, or CrossMoGram, for short. Funded jointly by AHRC and the German Research Council (DFG) and with an overall value of around £650,000, the CrossMoGram project runs for three years and is led by two PIs – deaf sociolinguist Dr. Nick Palfreyman (iSLanDS, UCLan) and hearing typologist Dr. Susanne Marie Michaelis (University of Leipzig). The other members of the CrossMoGram team are Dr. Luigi Lerose (UCLan) and Leonie von Krosigk (University of Leipzig ..read more

The past year has been a very busy one for iSLanDS – so busy, in fact, that we have completely neglected our blog! To rectify this, we hereby post a round-up of news from over the year. Further to this, we have three externally-funded research projects all due to start early in 2023, so we include a few teasers, with the promise of more details to come in the weeks that follow. iSLanDS wins Major Documentation Project funding from ELDP We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded over €90,000 from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme to record endangered sign language var ..read more

Empowering deaf people to improve their literacy skills has long been a cherished aim at iSLanDS, and we are delighted to announce two new volumes in the Ishara Research Series focusing on deaf multiliteracies. Edited by iSLanDS academics Jenny Webster and Ulrike Zeshan, the volumes are called READ WRITE EASY: Research, practice and innovation in deaf multiliteracies. The publications feature contributions from an array of academics mostly based in the Global South, including several deaf early-career researchers. These contributors have ties with our longstanding programme of research activit ..read more

Our co-Director, Nick Palfreyman, has participated in three live online workshops for Japanese deaf people, with the aim of sharing knowledge on sign language linguistics. The sessions, which have been organised by the Japanese Sign Language Teachers Center, are part of an initiative to train sign language interpreters, especially Deaf interpreters. Nick with participants and organisers from the Japanese Sign Language Teachers Center. The sessions covered different semantic and grammatical domains, including examples from different sign languages round the world. Nick said, ‘It was a great ple ..read more

Earlier this week, iSLanDS received a visit from Herbert Klein, Honorary President of the British Society for Mental Health and Deafness, to discuss resilience and disaster risk reduction. Herbert, who worked in the NHS for over thirty years on deaf mental health, has visited Indonesia several times over the last few years to share knowledge and skills on mental health awareness. The purpose of Herbert’s visit to iSLanDS this week was twofold. He advised on a research cluster activity, Building Deaf Resilience in Indonesia, which is supported by UCLan’s Institute on Citizenship, Society and Ch ..read more