This project explores the potential of storytelling, a culturally familiar practice in sign language communities, as a means of promoting agency, resilience and well being. It concerns deaf migrants from diverse nation states who use one or more signed language(s), usually including BSL (British Sign Language) and British deaf people who use BSL. Using techniques of narrative therapy, narrative analysis and grounded theory, the project investigates how life story work can enhance deaf people’s well being from a cross-cultural perspective. This research results in an instrument that explores the visual learning strengths of deaf people and the properties of visual (non-textual) languages through digital media. It extends current research on emancipation methodologies within critical deaf epistemologies and on narrative methods as a form of cultural brokering. The study also directly addresses the need for culturally appropriate means of improving deaf well being. 

The project Deaf life narratives in times of transition (2015-2017) is supported by a European Commission H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship of Dr. De Clerck at the Social Research with Deaf People (SORD) Group, University of Manchester.

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