BSL Corpus Project

Kearsy Cormier – Project Director/Principal Investigator (January-June 2011)

Kearsy is a hearing sign language researcher from Texas, USA. From 2002 to 2005, she worked as a lecturer in sign language linguistics at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. Since 2006, she has worked at DCAL at University College London as a Senior Researcher.

For more information about Kearsy, visit her personal website.

Jordan Fenlon – Research Associate

Jordan is Deaf from a large British Deaf family. He was research associate on the BSL Corpus Project from January 2009 until June 2011, and is currently working as a lecturer at Gallaudet University. Jordan took over from Sally as data collection co-ordinator, but was also responsible for annotation and analysis, working with Ramas Rentelis. He received his PhD from UCL in 2010. His thesis examined the production and perception of visual markers to boundaries in signed languages. His research interests inlcude the linguistics of signed languages, corpus-based approaches to sign language research, sociolinguistic variation in signed language and sign language prosody and how it is similar to and different from audio-visual prosody.

Ramas Rentelis – Research Assistant

Research assistant: video data capture, editing and annotation

Ramas is Deaf from a Deaf family, and was Research Assistant on the BSL Corpus Project from November 2008 until June 2011. He received his BA in Primary Education in 2004 from Vilnius Pedagogical University in Lithuania. During his studies, he was primarily interested in developmental issues related to d/Deaf children’s learning and also to their Deaf identity. He was the first Deaf Lithuanian Sign Language tutor for trainee interpreters in Vilnius College. In 2010, he obtained a PGDipl in Interpreting with the Deaf Community from Durham University. Currently, he is working towards his MSc in Deafhood Studies at Bristol University.

Adam Schembri – Project Director/Principal Investigator (January 2008 - December 2010)

Adam is a hearing sign language researcher originally from Sydney, Australia. Over the last two decades, Adam has worked as an English teacher, an Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreter, a researcher and lecturer. During 2000-2002, he was a lecturer in sign language linguistics at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. He then moved back Australia to work on projects on Auslan, before returning to the UK in 2006 to work at DCAL at University College London until 2010. He is now Director of the National Institute for Deaf Studies and Sign Language at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and is a Co-Investigator on the BSL Corpus Project (January-June 2011).

For more information about Adam, visit his personal website.

Sally Reynolds – Research Associate

Research associate: data collection co-ordinator (January 2008-February 2009)

Sally was responsible for co-ordinating the data collection in the first year of the BSL Corpus Project. In the mid 1990s, she worked as a researcher at the Centre for Deaf Studies at Bristol University, where she obtained an MPhil looking at Deaf people’s access to health care. More recently, while working at the National Deaf Children’s Society, Sally was responsible for managing a number of different projects, which included the Jack Ashley Millennium Awards for Young Deaf People. She was also responsible for overseeing the development of the Family Sign Language Curriculum.

Evelyn McFarland – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Belfast fieldworker
Evelyn is a native BSL user and comes from three generations of Deaf families. Currently, she works as a Community Support Worker with Deaf people which she enjoys. She previously taught BSL at Level 1, 2 and 3 for many years. She is interested in sign language variation, particularly in signs that were used in the past. She is proud to live in Belfast and invites you all to visit!

Jenny Wilkins (née Beech) – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Birmingham/West Midlands fieldworker

Jenny is a native BSL user from a Deaf family and has been involved in various posts in the local Deaf community, both professionally and socially. She was born in Birmingham, spent ten years in the Solihull area and now lives in Wolverhampton. For ten years, Jenny worked in the further education and adult sector delivering training courses such as literacy and numeracy to Deaf students, NVQ Levels 3 and 4 BSL, BSL/English interpreting workshops and Deaf awareness. Currently she is training to become a teacher of deaf and works in a Deaf resource base in a secondary school in Wolverhampton.

Carolyn Denmark – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Bristol fieldworker

Carolyn is a native BSL user, and comes from sixth generations of Deaf families. She grew up in the British Deaf community and has extensive knowledge about Deaf culture and sign language. Carolyn is no stranger to TV screens having worked as a presenter for BBC’s ‘See Hear’, ITV West, and in BSLBT’s ‘Under The Lamp’. She also had a small role in the BBC drama ‘Switch’ as Angela. Nowadays, Carolyn works with Remark in Birmingham as the Regional Co-ordinator for their interpreting and training division.

Jeff Brattan-Wilson – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Cardiff Fieldworker

Jeff is a Deaf native signer and has been working in the advocacy field for five years and is now managing the advocacy service in Wales and England for the British Deaf Association. He has also been involved in training interpreters for six years, and has worked as an on screen interpreter for ten years for various media companies, including ITV and BBC.

Sarah Lawrence – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Cardiff Fieldworker

Sarah Lawrence is Deaf, a fluent signer of BSL from Cardiff. Sarah is a successful business woman and owns ‘Deaf-Friendly Solutions’, an in-service training business for deaf and hearing organisations. She took over as the Deaf community fieldworker for Cardiff and southern Wales when Jeff Brattan-Wilson was no longer able to continue in his role.

Avril Hepner – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Greater Glasgow fieldworker

Avril is a native BSL user from a Deaf family in Glasgow. She has a vast amount of knowledge about the Deaf community and its culture, as well as several years of experience working with Deaf organisations. Avril is the Director of BSL for the British Deaf Association, with a remit to develop and deliver BSL curricula training to BSL teachers and assessors throughout the UK for the BSL Academy. In 2003, Avril helped to deliver a Certificate in the Linguistics of BSL course in Wales, working as a trainee under Frances Elton from DCAL. She also works on a regular basis as a BSL/English interpreter for Scottish Television news, and has undertaken a secondment at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston on the BSL:QED project.

Mark Nelson – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Greater London fieldworker (2008)

Mark is an active member of the Deaf community with several years of experience of working with Deaf organisations including the British Deaf Association, ‘The Vibe’, BBC ‘See Hear’, ‘Vee TV’ and numerous local Deaf clubs. He is also one of the founders and director of the award winning production/multimedia and BSL training company Remark! who regularly sponsor Deaf individuals and events. Mark is proud to be the fourth generation Deaf member of his family. A native Londoner, he has grown up attending Deaf events socialising with BSL users.

Mischa Cooke – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Greater London fieldworker (2009)

Mischa comes from a Deaf family and is an active member of the Deaf community. She loves to travel and attends deaf events all over the UK, meeting new deaf people. She used to work for ‘The Vibe’ and ‘See Hear’ as a reporter occasionally in her teenager years. She currently works part-time for the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL) as a Deaf Community Liaison Officer. She was asked to temporarily step in as Greater London fieldworker, before Melinda Napier took over the role.

Melinda Napier – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Greater London fieldworker

Melinda is a native BSL user and comes from a Deaf family spanning four generations. She was Head of Communication and Training Programme at City Lit until her (early) retirement in April 2009.  She was responsible for a wide range of courses such as Level 1 – 4 in BSL, Deaf Studies (a BA (Hons) course), and Teacher Training for Deaf Tutors.  She’s a Londoner born and bred and proud of it!

Jacqueline Parker – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Greater Manchester fieldworker

Jacqueline is a native BSL user from a Deaf family and originates from Oldham. After working for British Aerospace for over fifteen years, she went on to work at City College Manchester as a tutor for Deaf students. Recently, she worked at the British Deaf Association (BDA) as a BSL cultural development officer. With a keen interest in sport, she spent many years travelling as a representative for the Great Britain table tennis team competing with other Deaf people.

Dawn Marshall – Deaf Community Fieldworker

Newcastle Fieldworker

Dawn Marshall is a Deaf native signer of BSL from Newcastle. She has also lived and worked in the Belfast Deaf Community. Dawn is a well-respected and active member of her local community, holding numerous roles in local deaf education and community groups, and works as the manager for a Newcastle BSL/English interpreting agency.

Kyra Pollitt – Translator/Researcher

Kyra Pollitt holds degrees in Economic and Social History, Linguistics, and Translation and Interpreting and has been practising as an interpreter and translator since 1988, becoming a Member of the Register of Interpreters (with distinction) in 1990. Her BSL to English translation experience includes production, broadcast and subtitling scripts for Channel 4’s ‘Sign On’ programmes, the translation of a very large data set for a Cambridge University research project, various academic texts at undergraduate and postgraduate level (including doctoral theses), and texts for professional qualifications. She has also translated a number of BSL texts into academic articles for subsequent publication. Kyra undertook the BSL Corpus translations through the auspices of her business, The Pollitt Bureau, engaging a team of translators to each work on a regional dataset. She undertook the translations for one regional dataset and administered the translation activity. Kyra is currently undertaking an a/r/tography of University of Bristol’s BSL poetry anthology.

You can find out more about Kyra, by visiting her website.

Rosemary Stamp – Project PhD Student

In 2008, Rose graduated from the University of Wolverhampton with a degree in Deaf studies and linguistics, completing her dissertation on verb agreement across sign languages. Following this, she joined DCAL as part of a four-year funded masters and PhD studentship in association with the BSL Corpus Project. As part of her studentship, her MRes dissertation looked at number sign variation in BSL. She is now undertaking her PhD focusing on sociolinguistic variation and change in the BSL lexicon.

Delroy Nelson – Project Technician

For more information about Del, visit his webpage.

Co-investigators –

Project co-investigators not listed above are:
Margaret Deuchar (Bangor University)
Frances Elton (University College London)
Dónall Ó Baoill (Queens University Belfast)
Rachel Sutton-Spence (University of Bristol)
Graham H. Turner (Heriot-Watt University)
Bencie Woll (University College London)

Translation team –

Translation team

Janet Beck & Marie Franklin (Belfast translator & consultant)
Helen Dunipace & Avril Hepner (Glasgow translator & consultant)
Sue Lee & Dawn Marshall (Newcastle translator & consultant)
Cathryn McShane & Jeff Brattan-Wilson (Cardiff translator & consultant)
Kyra Pollitt & Carolyn Denmark (Bristol translator & consultant)
Elvire Roberts & Tom Johnston (Birmingham translator & consultant)
Sherratt Rowan & Rosemary Oram (Manchester translator & consultant)
Robert Skinner & Melinda Napier (London translator & consultant)

Additional data collection team –

Gemma Smith
Tom Johnston

Deaf Advisory Group –

Linda Day
Clark Denmark
Frances Elton
Helen Foulkes
Francis Murphy
Melinda Napier
Tessa Padden
Gary Quinn
Kate Rowley