Deaf scholar promoted to full professor in deaf studies in UK first

Trains in the Indian megacity of Mumbai are famously among the most crowded in the world, but they have also become “deaf meeting spots” where deaf people meet and socialise on their daily commute.

These unexpected gatherings in carriages reserved for disabled passengers have been documented by Annelies Kusters, who has just become the first deaf scholar to be made a full professor in the field of deaf studies and sign language studies in the UK.

While other countries in Europe and the US already have deaf professors working in these fields, Kusters says such an appointment is long overdue in the UK, which until now only had hearing people as full professors – about 10 to 15 of them.

Kusters, who has studied deaf communities around the world for almost 20 years, takes up the position at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, where she has been promoted from associate professor to professor in sociolinguistics in the department of languages and intercultural studies.

“I realise I am very privileged that I have made it this far,” Kusters said. “But I am standing on the shoulders of the deaf lecturers and scholars who educated me – and I support others to stand on mine.”

Deaf studies and sign language research first took off in the UK in the late 1970s. “I was educated by deaf lecturers in Bristol in 2006 and a deaf scholar supervised my PhD,” Kusters said. “It feels weird that I am now standing where my current deaf colleagues, and the colleagues in Bristol, or even my previous supervisor, never have stood.”

Belgian-born Kusters, 40, describes one of her research interests as observing deaf people in their day-to-day lives, and her work has taken her to Brazil, Denmark, France, Ghana, India, Italy, Kenya and Suriname.

“For example, my PhD was in a Ghanaian village with a high rate of hereditary deafness,” Kusters said. There she found deaf and hearing people using a locally emerged sign language with each other.

“While other researchers are fascinated by the genetics or just the linguistics of the local sign language, I was interested in learning about their daily lives – how they communicate, socialise, and so on.

“In Mumbai I explored how deaf and hearing people communicate through signs and gestures on the bustling trains of Mumbai. Those trains are not just a mode of transport – they’re also deaf meeting spots.”

Her research found that deaf passengers were using the compartments reserved for people with disabilities – as well as Mumbai’s congested train platforms – as important meeting places. Links in the Mumbai deaf community were strengthened as a result and deaf awareness among hearing people grew.

Kusters is also the research lead for MobileDeaf, a project funded by the European Research Council to explore how deaf people from different countries interact with each other and adapt their signing to be able to understand each other.

Prof Jemina Napier, Heriot-Watt’s chair of intercultural communication, said: “Heriot-Watt University is proud to have the first deaf full professor in the UK.

“After almost 40 years of deaf studies research and teaching in universities in the UK, it is long overdue, as deaf scholars should be leading at the forefront of this discipline.”