Ulrike Zeshan

Director of UCLan's International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies

International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies
University of Central Lancashire, Livesey House 212, Preston, PR1 2HE
+44 (0)1772 893104
UZeshan@uclan.ac.uk

Prof. Ulrike Zeshan is the director of UCLan's International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies. She is a linguist with a PhD from the University of Cologne and has been involved in sign language research for over 15 years, having conducted fieldwork on sign languages in Pakistan, India, Turkey, and Lebanon. She was head of the Sign Language Typology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands before coming to Preston.

Current Research

Ulrike's research focuses on the documentation of sign languages in non-Western countries, including sign languages in village communities with hereditary deafness, and on large-scale comparative studies of grammatical structures - such as negation, questions and possession - across sign languages around the world. Her applied research is based in developing countries, focusing on literacy teaching in India and on capacity building in Uganda and Ghana.

Research Supervision

Supervision of MPhil/PhD projects:
A reference grammar of Ugandan Sign Language
The sign language and deaf community in Alipur village, South India

Supervision of MA by Research projects:
Online elementary-level English literacy programme for young deaf adults using Indian Sign Language
Algerian Jewish Sign Language – survival or extinction
Non-manual expressions in Turkish Sign Language and Mardin Sign Language
The Impact of an Interactive Learning Platform on the Learning of English as a Second Language by Young Deaf Indian Sign Language Users
Teaching English Literacy through an Online English Learning Platform (ELP) for Deaf Peer Educators

Research Projects

Sign Language Typology – The cross-linguistic study of sign languages (German Science Foundation (DFG), 2003 – 2008)
Distance education for sign language users (UK-India Education and Research Initiative, 2007 - 2010)
Training and employability for the deaf communities in Ghana and Uganda (Education Partnership Africa, 2008 - 2010)
Endangered sign languages in village communities (European Science Foundation, 2009 – 2012)

External Affiliations / Roles

Ulrike is involved in applied work for curriculum and materials development together with NGOs and governmental departments serving deaf communities in India and in Turkey, and is the founder and president of the Deaf Empowerment Foundation in the Netherlands. She is an Ambassador for Deaf Parenting UK and an academic consultant at the apex national institute serving deaf people in India.

Selected Publications

Zeshan, U. (2000a) Sign language in Indo-Pakistan: a description of a signed language. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Zeshan, U. (2000b) Gebärdensprachen des indischen Subkontinents (Linguistic research forum 4). München and Newcastle: Lincom Europa.

Zeshan, U. (2001) Mouthing in Indopakistani Sign Language (IPSL): Regularities and variations. In Boyes Braem, P. and Sutton-Spence, R. (eds) The hands are the head of the mouth: the mouth as articulator in sign language (International Studies on Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf 39). Hamburg: Signum, 247-71.

Zeshan, U (2002) Sign language in Turkey: The story of a hidden language. Turkic Languages 6(2): 229-74.

Zeshan, U. (2003a) "Classificatory" constructions in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language: grammaticalization and lexicalization processes. In Emmorey, K. (ed) Perspectives on classifier constructions in sign languages. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 113-41.

Zeshan, U. (2003b) Indo-Pakistani Sign Language grammar: a typological outline. Sign Language Studies 3(2): 157-212.

Zeshan, U. (2003c) Aspects of Türk Isaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language). Sign Language and Linguistics 6(1): 43-75.

Zeshan, U. (2003d) Towards a notion of ‘word’ in sign languages. In Dixon, R. M. W. and Aikhenvald, A. Y. (eds) Word: a cross-linguistic typology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 153-79.

Zeshan, U. (2004a) Hand, head and face: negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 8(1): 1-58.

Zeshan, U. (2004b) Interrogative constructions in signed languages: cross-linguistic perspectives. Language 80(1): 7-39.

Sethna, M., Vasishta, M. and Zeshan, U. (2004) Implementation of Indian Sign Language in educational settings. Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal 15(2): 15-39.

Zeshan, U. (2005) Sign languages. In Dryer, M., Gil, D. and Haspelmath, M. (eds) World atlas of language structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 558-67.

Aboh, E., Pfau, R. and Zeshan, U. (2006) When a wh-word is not a wh-word: The case of Indian Sign Language. In Singh, R., and Bhattacharya, T. (eds) The yearbook of south Asian languages and linguistics 2005. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 11-43.

Zeshan, U. (2006a) Sign languages of the world. In Brown, K. (ed) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics, 2nd edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Zeshan, U., ed. (2006b) Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages (Sign Language Typology Series No. 1). Nijmegen: Ishara Press.

Zeshan, U. (2007a): The ethics of documenting sign languages in village communities. Proceedings of the Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory, 7-8 December 2007, SOAS, London.

Zeshan, Ulrike  (2007b): Roots, leaves and branches – The typology of sign languages. In: Quadros, Ronice Mueller de (ed): Sign Languages: spinning and unraveling the past, present and future. Forty five papers and three posters from the 9° Theoretical Issues In Sign Language Research Conference, Florianopolis, Brazil, December 2006. Petropolis: Editoria Arara Azul.

Perniss, Pamela & Zeshan, Ulrike (eds.) (2008): Possessive and existential constructions in sign languages. Sign Language Typology Series No. 2. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.

Schwager, W. and Zeshan, U. (2008): Word classes in sign languages – Criteria and classifications. In Ansaldo, U., J. Don & R. Pfau (eds.) Parts of Speech: Descriptive tools, theoretical constructs. Special Issue of Studies in Language 32:3, 509 – 545.

Dikyuva, Hasan & Zeshan, Ulrike (2008): Turk Isaret Dili - Birinci Duzey. [Turkish Sign Language - Level One]. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.

Hendriks, Bernadet & Zeshan, Ulrike (to appear): Sign Languages in the Arab World. In: Versteegh, Kees et al. (eds.): Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (EALL). Leiden: Brill.