This is Acadeafic, a deaf-curated multi-author academic platform that aims for Deaf Studies and sign language researchers to share their work in a bite-sized format.
Acadeafic is curated by Maartje De Meulder, Annelies Kusters, Joseph Murray and Erin Moriarty. We are four deaf academics and friends, and managing editors of this website.
We have set up this website because there is an amazing output of research on Deaf Studies and sign languages (journal articles, books, research projects, dissertations, and more), but as a research community we want to do more to share our work with audiences within and beyond academia, on an open-access basis, and in formats that are easier to digest than full-length academic prose.
This website gives you as a researcher an opportunity to do exactly that: talk about your research and interests in an accessible way.
All our posts are bilingual, consisting of a blog in English and a vlog in International Sign (or a national signed language). The blogs and vlogs are designed to act as stand-alone pieces and are not necessarily translations from one language to the other. We believe that texts in a written language such as English and in a signed language are often meant for different audiences, and should be produced with this audience design in mind. Therefore, at Acadeafic a written blog can have a slightly different content than a signed video blog, can highlight different issues or examples, and have a different structure or aim.
We want you! If you are interested to write an Acadeafic article, get in touch and check our editorial guidelines.
This website is deaf-curated but it goes without saying that we also welcome blogs/vlogs from hearing researchers. In fact, we encourage you to share your research here and make it relevant to a wider audience!
For submissions or general questions to the editors, please use contact@acadeafic.org
Editor-in-chief
Associate editors
Maartje De Meulder is senior researcher at University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. She is a leading scholar working at the intersection of Deaf Studies, Disability Studies, Sign Language Interpreting Studies and language technologies. Her interdisciplinary work addresses key challenges facing deaf communities, with a current focus on the ethics of AI-driven language technologies and their impact on deaf communication and access practices. She is frequently observed writing in public spaces such as coffee houses and train stations.
maartje.demeulder@hu.nl
Annelies Kusters is Professor of Sociolinguistics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Between 2017 and 2023, she led a deaf research team focusing on intersectionality and translanguaging in the context of international deaf mobilities, called MobileDeaf. She specialises in Deaf Studies, human geography, applied linguistics, and social anthropology. Her secret to deal with academic multitasking is her bullet journal, and her dream is to have a large vegetable garden one day!
a.kusters@hw.ac.uk
Joseph Murray is Professor of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. He has published widely in the area of Deaf Studies, history, and human rights. As a scholar active in international human rights advocacy, any given month will likely see Joe spending more commuting hours in planes than in cars.
joseph.murray@gallaudet.edu
Erin Moriarty is Assistant Professor the University of Virginia. An ethnographer with extensive fieldwork experience in Cambodia and Indonesia, her work examines language use, translanguaging, sign language documentation and the socio-cultural dynamics within deaf communities. On Saturday evenings, she is often at someone’s dining room table, playing a heated game of Exploding Kittens. Or, Pandemic, but lately, she’s been losing, so the world would be in a bit of a pickle if she was an infectious diseases specialist in real life!
erin.moriarty.harrelson@gallaudet.edu
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