Deaf flourishing – a fascinating world of research

As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Manchester (SORD) in the EU Horizon 2020 programme (2015-2017), I studied how the cultural practice of deaf life storytelling can support the wellbeing of British deaf people and deaf migrants in the UK. As a researcher-practitioner of therapeutic life story work, I generated a new cross-cultural intervention called Deaf Life Story Work, harnessing deaf signers’ unique visual strengths and languages.

For more than 10 years, my research has focussed on the capacity of
deaf people to "flourish", i.e. to live up to their potential, in
wide-ranging settings in both Western and non-Western countries. On
this topic, I recently published Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and
Learning: A Comparative Perspective (2016, Gallaudet University
Press, Washington, DC).