Ulrike Zeshan

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 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.

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 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)

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

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.