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Meet Kearsy Cormier, the Director of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL), as she warmly welcomes you to the world of DCAL’s innovative research. DCAL boasts a multidisciplinary team of experts from fields such as linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. They are committed to investigating how deaf individuals engage with, comprehend, and learn languages, as well as understanding the cognitive processes unique to deaf people. The research conducted at DCAL has been groundbreaking, shedding light on language processing in the brain, the influence of language variation on sign language structure, and how language is processed by both deaf children and adults. These insights are not only integral for advancing the scientific knowledge in this domain but are also invaluable in informing educational practices and clinical interventions tailored for the deaf community. Explore DCAL's website to learn more about their mission and groundbreaking discoveries.
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6/8/2023
We were saddened by the passing of Frances Elton earlier this year. Frances worked at DCAL for many years. Frances had a long career in research and teaching and her work influenced a great many people. We will be holding a memorial event in honour of Frances to celebrate her life’s work. This will be on Saturday 21st January from 2pm to 5.30pm. There will be various speakers and we will be doing a premier showing of the final version of ‘Lightwave’, a film developed by Rubbena Aurengzeb-Tariq and Prof. Bencie Woll, see: https://www.rubbena.com/lightwave-trellis-2020
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12/2/2022
Bencie’s Festschrift
On 9th November we held a Festschrift symposium to celebrate the academic career of Prof. Bencie Woll, DCAL’s founding Director. Current and past colleagues discussed Bencie’s legacy across sociolinguistics, neuroscience and psychology, as well as her efforts to promote changes in public policy, public engagement and capacity building. Tributes celebrating her multidisciplinary long-lasting impact came from her collaborators from around the world, who joined in person and online. To honour Bencie’s scientific and social legacy, we have started a fundraiser for the ‘Bencie Woll Award’ for early career researchers in sign languages. You can contribute to this initiative. It was a wonderful day of celebration and togetherness! If you missed this event, a recording of the event will be available on our website soon.
Congratulations Bencie on your amazing career and achievements which continue to amaze! At the moment Bencie is working with the producers of Sign 2 Win,
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12/2/2022
The British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus is a publicly accessible, on-line record of BSL used by Deaf people in the UK. It’s a collection of video clips showing Deaf people using BSL, together with background information about the signers and written descriptions of the signing in ELAN. You can also explore BSL SignBank, a wonderful website with approximately 2500 BSL signs developed from the BSL Corpus. In other words, BSL signs directly from the deaf community!
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12/8/2021
While face coverings have been important in reducing the spread of Covid-19, it has affected human communication, particularly for deaf and hard-of-hearing people (HoH). In collaboration with Dr. Eva Gutierrez-Sigut (project lead), lecturer at the University of Essex, Dr. Kate Rowley (co-investigator) carried out a survey exploring the impact of face coverings on communication. Responses from 395 deaf/HoH people from the U.K. and Spain revealed that despite difficulties in communication, most deaf/HoH wore masks. Deaf people who became deaf later in life struggled the most with communication and reported lower levels of wellbeing. All deaf people, whether they became deaf early or late in life, reported that they were missing more information and felt more disconnected from society.
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12/7/2021
2021 saw the realisation of the “Light-Wave” project, where Deaf artist Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq and Prof. Bencie Woll, together with members of the East London Deaf community, examined the underrepresentation of the Deaf community in cultural discourse. They focused on the community’s history, culture, Sign Language development and use, and collaboratively explored the potential of Zoom as a site of co-creation for Deaf people.
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12/7/2021
What does BSL Recognition mean to you?
I remember when I was 14 years old having attended the BSL March. The march, a glorious celebration and campaign of BSL resulted into the recognition of BSL and I remember as a young child how inspiring that felt.
So for me, what does BSL recognition mean? There are a few things. One, raised positive visibility of deaf people and British Sign Language. Secondly, a recognition of it’s language, culture and rich history from past to this present day. This too supports human and sign language rights and working toward lobbying and consulting with services to ensure BSL services are provided and of high quality.
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3/10/2021