Projects

In our HANDS!Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies, we run projects pertaining to sign language linguistics with a focus on Africa. In addition, we are running projects on sign language teaching, tactile signing, deaf people’s experiences with the legal system, and deaf history.

School for Digital Deaf Studies

The School for Digital Deaf Studies 2025 is a hybrid school consisting of one week online and a two-week school in person in Ghana aiming for the capacity building needed to expand academic research and education activities in digital Deaf studies, informed by insiders’ perspectives. Read more...

Van Onzichtbaar naar Zichtbaar / From Invisible to Visible

Als culturele minderheidsgroep heeft de Nederlandse dovengemeenschap een eigen taal, cultuur en geschiedenis die teruggaat tot de oprichting van de eerste dovenschool in 1790 en mogelijk zelfs daarvoor. In 2021 werd de Nederlandse Gebarentaal officieel erkend. De afgelopen jaren is er een groeiende belangstelling voor Nederlands erfgoed, maar het erfgoed van de dovengemeenschap is grotendeels onzichtbaar gebleven. Tegelijkertijd is het doorgeven van gebarentaal en dovencultuur aan jongere generaties steeds minder vanzelfsprekend aan het worden, door veranderingen in onderwijs, technologie en de samenleving. Lees meer / Read more...

Through the hands of signers: modeling spread and change in historical sign language linguistics

The history of sign languages of deaf people is severely understudied. The historical linguistics of sign languages offers a fundamentally new perspective on the history of human languages. This project addresses the dearth of knowledge about historical sign language linguistics through a large-scale study of the social and linguistic histories of SLs in Europe and West Africa. It generates a broad, cross-linguistically validated model of the spread and change of SLs over time, which scholars can use to model historical linguistics beyond communicative modality. Read more...

From Gesture to Language

This running project aims to find out whether variation and similarities in co-speech gesturing lead to variation and similarities in the structure of (unrelated) sign languages by comparing six unrelated sign languages in West Africa. Further, size and shape usage in two varieties of ASL will be studied. Read more...

Language socialization in deaf families in Africa

During this project, deaf and hearing researchers mapped the language socialization of children of deaf adults in five African countries, comparing interactions and language socialization. In this way, a light was shed on cross-cultural patterns in language socialization. Read more...

The role of hearing signers in the development of channel specific structures in sign languages of deaf communities

In this project, the hypothesis that language contact crucially impacts the development of spatial grammar and phonology was investigated. The project aimed to shed light on the interplay of two factors impacting sign language structure; channel-inherent tendencies and sociolinguistic features. Read more...

Sign languages of Iran

The PhD project of Nargess Asghari focusses on an emerging village sign language in Iran. She explores the verbal system of this sign language and the influence of the surrounding spoken language because of the language contact. She also compares parts of the lexicon and verbal system of this village sign language with the lexicon and verbal system of the national sign language (Iranian Sign Language). Read more...

Dutch Missionaries and Deaf Education in Africa

This traineeship project (study year 2019-2020) aimed to explore the influence of Dutch missionaries on deaf education in Africa between 1960 and 1990. By means of archival documentation, interviews and photographs is tried to map the earlier situation. Read more...

Emerging tactile International Sign in Europe

For her PhD project, Lisa van der Mark aims to create an International Tactile sign corpus in which interactions, interviews, assignments, and discussions will be recorded. By means of multiple analyses new lemmas and structures that arised can be detected. Another goal is to find appropriate research methods and explore ways to make research methods appropriate for tactile sign languages research. Read more...

Effatha-gebaren

This traineeship project (study year 2018-2019), presented in written and signed Dutch, studied an endangered dialect of Nederlandse Gebarentaal. It emerged in the protestant deaf school Effatha. The project aimed to identifying, documenting and analyzing Effatha gebaren and its early history. Read more...

The emerging sign language of Guinea-Bissau (LGG)

In this PhD project. Mariana Martins focuses on the emerging sign language of Guinea-Bissau. Her research zooms in on the morphosyntactic structure of this sign language and hopes to gain more insight on how morphosyntactic structures in emerging sign languages are developed. Read more...

Exploring new methods in comparing sign language corpora

For his PhD project, Manolis Fragkiadakis is developing a tool that innovates the analysis of signed languages. By using a collection of sign language corpora of four African sign languages, he explores ways in which automated image analysis can be used for semi-automated lemma generation. Read more...