Tag Archives: deaf studies

Profile: Dr. Hilde Haualand

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A smiling white woman with blue eyes and graying hair cut in a curly bob. She wears a light blue shirt, and delicate gold chains around her neck.
  • Current title: Professor
  • Location: Oslo, Norway
  • Field of expertise: Sign language, deaf studies, sign language interpreting
  • Years of experience in academia: Contract researcher since 2001, PhD completed 2012.
  • Twitter: @hildemh

Background?

I am a deaf multilingual in several signed and written languages (and selectively and contextually, sometimes also spoken languages), who grew up in a hearing family. My parents made sure I met deaf role models early on. I obtained my elementary education at the local school, but played with friends and participated in leisure activities at the nearby deaf school. Continuously switching between deaf and hearing people instilled in me a lifelong habit of observing and comparing people, their language habits, and their social behavior in different contexts. After completing my MA in social anthropology in 2001, I started to work at a contract research institute (Fafo Research Foundation), and eventually also obtained my PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo in 2012. After a post doctorate at NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology 2015-2017, I started to work as an associate professor at OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University, where I was recently promoted to (full) professor. 

How did you get to where you are?

Feeling like a half insider, half outsider among both deaf and hearing people for years, I was attracted early on to the thinking and theoretical approaches of social anthropology. Being raised in a family of academics, it was never a question if I should enter higher education, only which field – and I was lucky to find my direction early. After working as a contract researcher for a few years, my research group got a grant from the Norwegian Research Council, which included a PhD scholarship for me. Since I had maneuvered academia with and without interpreters for years, I did not really have any big concerns regarding accessibility, but could feel the impostor syndrome hitting every now and then. However, it was more difficult than I had anticipated to find qualified interpreters who could handle advanced academic discourse in English at a PhD level. When I finally got an agreement with the interpreting service providers that I would be able to work with a team of three interpreters throughout my PhD, things worked out better. Also, a growing international network of deaf academics has been an invaluable asset, as they inspire me, and make my job so much more fun than it would be if I only had to work with hearing academics. Last, but not least – I have a great group of colleagues at OsloMet. At the section for sign language and interpreting, Norwegian sign language is our working language, regardless of hearing status; this has been very important for my work environment, providing a collegiate spirit and a necessary feeling of belonging. 

What is the biggest professional challenge you have or have had? How do you mitigate this challenge?

Currently my biggest challenge is the idea that academia and research can be organized according to New Public Management principles, and all the “efficiency improvement” measures that really only put more administrative burden on faculty. I did not obtain a PhD to spend a full working day trying to make sure we get the rooms we need for teaching. Covid times have however put us all in the same boat, so it’s currently mostly about making sure the students get what they are entitled to, and make the best out of it. 

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

Our department has an in-house interpreter who is paid by the university. She does much of the ad hoc interpreting in the hallways, at shorter meetings, and on Zoom, and organizes all other planned and longer interpreting requests that continuously pour in when there are both signers and non-signers at the department and at the university. Had the university instead relied on outside interpreters, the labor of requesting and organizing all the interpreting assignments would fall on us [faculty]. Without our in-house interpreter, we would probably be able to devote less time to our professional work, and would spend more time organizing interpreters. 

What is your typical day like?

In these home office days, I start the day with a walk (following son to school) before a hour long virtual “Shut up and write” session with 4-5 colleagues at 9:00. Then there’s planning, planning, administration, teaching preparations, administration, e-mails and meetings for the rest of the day, and I often stop by 5 – 5.30. Then there’s almost always some reading (review, supervision, assessment etc.) to do, which I sometimes do at night, or during one of my favorite times: early Saturday and Sunday mornings, before the family wakes up, with a cup of coffee and a small piece of dark chocolate! But I’ve learned I also need daily breaks, so I often end the day with a TV show and some knitting before bed time.

What advice would you give your former self?

Work with people you like. There’s always brighter times coming when the days are dull. Impostor syndrome is probably one of the most common syndromes among researchers. Believe that you have a unique and valid position and vision, and can make a contribution. 

Any funny stories you want to share?

At a dinner for PhD advisors, one of my seatmates started to ask the usual questions about sign language (Is it universal? Why not?), interpreters (Do they work full time? Do you know them?) and deaf people (How deaf are you? Are there any other deaf researchers?), but eventually, I got one unexpected question; “How often do you have to answer these questions, and how much time to you spend answering them?” I made a quick estimate and said with a smile it could last about the time of one course at a conference dinner. A little bit later, I started a conversation with someone at the other side of the table, who soon (and as expected) started to ask the same kind of questions. I swallowed a small sigh, and before I politely prepared myself for another round with the same topic, the first seatmate burst out “Give her a break! Hilde just answered all those questions, and now I hear how stupid they are.” For the rest of the evening, we all talked about anything but sign language, interpreters and deaf people, which does not happen too often (unfortunately).  

Profile: Dr. Maartje De Meulder

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A white woman with light brown short hair smiles with her hand on her hip. She is wearing a white t-shirt with an image of Frida Kahlo.
  • Current title: senior researcher/lecturer
  • Location: University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, the Netherlands
  • Field of expertise: Deaf Studies and applied language studies
  • Years of experience (since start of PhD): 8
  • Website: https://maartjedemeulder.be/
  • Twitter: @mdemeulder

Background?

I was born in Flanders, Belgium to hearing (non-signing) parents. I am the oldest of four. I grew up hard-of-hearing and became deaf in my teenage years. I went to a regular school where I used hearing aids and FM and relied on lipreading. I was raised and educated in Dutch, and learned to sign (Vlaamse Gebarentaal – Flemish Sign Language – VGT) when I was 16, through socializing in the Flemish deaf community. At home with my partner and two children I use VGT. In my personal and professional life, on any given day I use a mixture of languages: Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT) (Sign Language of the Netherlands), British Sign Language, International Sign, VGT, Dutch, and English. As a Belgian I can make do in French, and I can understand ASL (or some academic ASL at least).

How did you get to where you are?

After I obtained my first MA degree in Belgium (Disability Studies), I felt that something was missing. I applied (and got funding, quite importantly) to study for an MSc in Deaf Studies at the Centre for Deaf Studies (CDS) at the University of Bristol in 2005. It was one of the best decisions of my life. It felt like coming home, not only in terms of content of the study but also because there were other deaf students, the classes were mainly taught in British Sign Language, some of the professors and lecturers were deaf themselves, and the social life was also in sign. It was in Bristol that I realized I wanted to do more research in Deaf Studies. Bristol also gave me a brilliant network of friends and colleagues.

After I got my degree, I actually got the opportunity to do a PhD at the University of Bristol, but decided to defer the funding for one year because I felt I had done enough studying by then (6 years), and wanted something different that was more practice-oriented. The Flemish deaf association offered me a job in their advocacy team and I decided to take the offer. This was also one of the decisions that have deeply influenced my life and who I am as a researcher and a person. Eventually, one year became five years. Five years of advocacy work (linked to deaf education, access, sign language interpreting services, tv broadcasting, etc.), community work (organizing events, workshops, courses), learning to engage with a great number of different people from all walks of life. It was a great experience.

After five years, I felt it was time to get back to research again, but obviously by that time my funding in Bristol was no longer available. I started to look for PhD funding and in the end got a PhD position at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. My PhD was about the legal recognition of sign languages — more specifically in Finland and Scotland, where I followed the process from initial campaign to final adopted law. After my PhD I started a post-doc position at the University of Namur in Belgium funded by the Marie Curie Actions, for which I did a study on sign language vitality in Flanders. When that funding ran out, I applied for a few academic jobs and got a position at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU) in the Netherlands, which is currently my institution. HU is the only university in the Netherlands that trains sign language interpreters (at BA-level) and they also offer a Master in Deaf Studies. I teach both BA and MA students, and am also a senior researcher at the research group ‘Participation through Communication’, where I am responsible for carrying out Deaf Studies and sign language research.

What is the biggest professional challenge you face (as educator or researcher)? How do you mitigate this challenge?

Working with sign language interpreters is definitely one of the biggest challenges, so much so that I decided to make it a professional and research interest of mine 🙂

Being an academic who is deaf (and a woman) is another challenge: when you have critical opinions and are used to voicing these, you are quickly seen as ‘angry’, ‘emotional’, or ‘irritated’.

Not linked to being a deaf academic, but as a researcher in general:

  • At this stage in my career, I find a real challenge is having to adapt research agendas based on your institution/employer/funding, which means I feel I can never really finish projects. People are asking me for publications, presentations, etc., based on my PhD or postdoc research (I haven’t even yet analysed all the data I collected during my postdoc!). I am now based at an applied university, which means I need to do practice-based research. This is really interesting and fun to do, but also means it’s not always so easy to connect this with the other stuff I was working on before.
  • Linked to the previous point: academia can be overwhelming. The work is never finished, there is always that one paper to finish, that one grant to follow up on, that one article that is still on your to-read list. There is competition, you need to publish, teach, and do admin. As deaf academics, we do all the extra emotional labor too, that is often invisible: working with sign language interpreters (it’s not just working with them!; it’s looking for the right ones, preparing them, debriefing them, etc.), educating colleagues about accessibility issues, coping with hearing fragility. Me and many of my deaf colleagues also do a lot of volunteer work to support other deaf academics and Deaf Studies & sign language researchers (for example our work for Acadeafic and Dr Deaf, …). I had a burn-out last year and I don’t want to go through that again. So I firmly set boundaries, I let people know those boundaries, I don’t feel guilty for not working overtime, I unplug now and then.

What is an example of accommodation that you either use or would like to use in your current job?

Sign language interpreters are necessary to do my job, but since I’ve only been at my institution in the Netherlands for just over a year and have to work in NGT increasingly in professional/academic contexts, I’m still finding out which NGT interpreters ‘match’ with me for which professional contexts. I’d like to work with a few designated ones but am currently in the ‘trial and error’ phase still, which is frustrating often.

I’d like to use caption services more. As deaf academics (in Europe) sign language interpreters are often the accommodation we request or are given, but watching an academic presentation in English with for example a BSL interpreter (even a very good one), is still a challenge. People tend to think that with interpreters we have ‘access’ and that’s all there is to it. But that’s actually not true. Interpreters are an accommodation we have to work with to make it work, so to say. The source is in one language, while the output is in another. You don’t have to be a language researcher to know how much can get lost in translation. When we see interpreters’ signed utterances we need to do the mental work of understanding the meaning and how it relates to the source language and the concepts the speaker is using for example. Sometimes it is just easier, and requires much less mental load, to follow the presentation in the same language and modality. And for Q&A and networking, use interpreters.

Tell us about your website, Acadeafic.

I started Acadeafic with friends/colleagues Annelies Kusters, Joseph Murray and Erin Moriarty (also deaf academics) in May 2019. Acadeafic is a deaf-curated, multi-author platform that allows Deaf Studies and sign language researchers to share their work in a bite-sized format. There is an amazing output of research on Deaf Studies and sign languages, but as a research community we want to do more to share our work with audiences within and beyond academia, on an open-access basis, and in formats that are easier do digest than full-length academic prose. All our posts are bilingual, with a vlog in any sign language the author prefers and a blog in English. Most of our posts are based on recently published articles or chapters. We also host series of posts based on special issues or edited volumes. We are keen to support junior researchers in promoting their work. We also offer a space for editorials or opinion pieces related to (doing) Deaf Studies and sign language research, for example working with sign language interpreters, navigating academia as a deaf scholar, research methodology and ethics, and access to academic discourse. All our submissions go through peer review conducted by Acadeafic and/or external reviewers, also all deaf. So if you are a Deaf Studies and/or sign language researcher and want to promote your work, get in touch!

What advice would you give your former self?

You’re not here to please everyone. 

Any funny stories you want to share?

A few years ago I was at an academic conference dinner. We were at a mixed deaf/hearing table, and there was one sign language interpreter with us. I was talking with one hearing academic and when we had a brief pause, the interpreter left a bit to take a break. I left my phone in my room and I didn’t have anything else to write with to continue the conversation with him, so I gestured ‘phone’ to him in the hopes that he would take out his phone and type. Instead he took out a bit of paper and handed me his phone number. I was like ‘oh’ and he quickly realized that this wasn’t what I was asking him. It was embarrassing, but funny, and the ice was broken for the rest of the evening.