Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
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- Professor of Sign Linguistics
- Linguistics
- Div of Psychology & Lang Sciences
- Faculty of Brain Sciences
I am Professor of Sign Linguistics at the UCL Deafness Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre with affiliation within the UCL Linguistics research department. I am also Deputy Director of DCAL. I earned my PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 2002 and from 2002 to 2005 was a Lecturer at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. I have been at DCAL since it was founded in 2006. My research and teaching focus on the linguistic structure of sign languages, especially British Sign Language (BSL), and in visual aspects of language more generally.
For more details about my work please visit my website.


My research involves the linguistic structure of sign languages, especially British Sign Language (BSL), and in visual aspects of language more generally. My work has focused on how various characteristics such as classifiers, constructed action/role shift, pointing and fingerspelling become grammaticised and nativised in sign languages. I am also leading on work on sign language documentation, and variation and change, at the levels of phonology, lexicon, morphosyntax, and grammar, particularly using the BSL Corpus and BSL SignBank.
I am Director of Teaching at UCL's Deafness Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre, with oversight across all of DCAL's degree-level teaching activities. I am also strand coordinator for the UCL MSc in Language Sciences (specialisation in Sign Language and Deaf Studies). I teach PLIN0036 "The Linguistics of Sign Languages". I also contribute to the teaching of PALS0020 "Deafness: Cognition and Language" and several other modules across the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences.
2002 | Doctor of Philosophy | University of Texas at Austin | |
1998 | Master of Arts | University of Texas at Austin | |
1994 | Bachelor of Arts (Honours) | University of Texas at Austin |