Keynote Speakers

Christine Yoshinaga-Itano

Dr. Christine Yoshinaga-Itano is a Research Professor, Institute of Cognitive Science, Professor Emerita, Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Visiting Professor, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, Centre for Deaf. She has over 125 published articles and chapters with a focus on universal newborn hearing screening and predictors of developmental outcomes of children with hearing loss with an emphasis on children and families from multicultural/linguistic backgrounds, and those with socio-economic and linguistic challenges. She received Honors from the American Speech/Language & Hearing Association and was Jerger Career Research Awardee from the American Academy of Audiology. She serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Audiology and is a member of the Audiology committee for the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP).

LECTURE TITLE: “BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING:  What happened to children after establishing EHDI – including children with socio-economic challenges, language/cultural differences &/or additional disabilities?”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: This presentation will provide data and theoretical rationale that seeks to “break the glass ceiling”, an invisible barrier to success, and refute limit setting for children who are deaf or hard of hearing regardless of risk. Greater risk may require the need for modifications in the type and intensity of service provided to families and children who are deaf or hard of hearing in order to overcome challenges and achieve optimal developmental outcomes. This presentation is a cautionary tale against setting limitations on families and children who are deaf or hard of hearing because of greater obstacles (lower levels of parent education, cultural differences from majority culture, linguistic differences, additional disabilities, later age of diagnosis and early intervention services) through fortune-telling of a bleak or difficult future. While earlier diagnosis and earlier intervention services play a dramatic role in overcoming challenges, there are other pathways to successful outcomes. The greater the number of variables that are positive (greater cognitive skills, better hearing levels, higher levels of education, earlier identification and intervention, hearing loss only, linguistic differences), the easier the developmental pathway. However, a growing number of children and their families with greater challenges are overcoming these obstacles and achieving remarkable outcomes.  This presentation will provide longitudinal developmental reading proficiency outcomes of children who are deaf or hard of hearing from 8 to 16 years of age after establishing universal newborn hearing screening.

Maartje De Meulder

Dr. Maartje De Meulder is a senior researcher at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, and Honorary Research Fellow at Heriot-Watt University. She is a leading expert in the field of Deaf Studies, with a particular and interdisciplinary focus on sign language policy and planning, sign language technologies, and Sign Language Interpreting Studies. Her research roadmap addresses contemporary societal challenges faced by deaf communities, and her work has been published in a range of different journals such as Human Rights Quarterly, Language Policy, and Translation and Interpreting Studies. She has co-edited Innovations in Deaf Studies (Oxford University Press, 2017) and The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages (Multilingual Matters, 2019) and has been a guest editor of several special issues of journals. She is passionate about supporting the development of Deaf Studies as an academic field of research and teaching. Additionally, she is dedicated to supporting capacity building of deaf scholars as one of the coordinators of the successful dr Deaf workshops. Find out more about her publications, presentations and media appearances on her personal website.

LECTURE TITLE: “This is our rhythm: academic becoming and realignment in deaf space”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: Deaf scholars have long worked at the margins of academic institutions not designed for them. Designated deaf academic spaces – where deaf ways of knowing, teaching, and communicating are centred rather than accommodated – remain rare, especially in transnational contexts. This paper explores what becomes possible when such a space is created, presenting Dr Deaf as a case study. Drawing on interviews with participants and teachers, we examine how deaf epistemologies and pedagogies are enacted in practice. We introduce the concept of cross-stage responsibility to describe the horizontal and vertical mentoring that characterise Dr Deaf and frame the space as one of academic becoming. Central to this process is realignment: the structural, pedagogical, affective, and linguistic reconfiguration of academic space that centre deaf perspectives. We also identify a distinct deaf rhythm that emerges in this space. While Dr Deaf is context-specific, its values offer a flexible framework for imagining and sustaining other deaf academic and broader educational spaces.

Gladys Tang

Gladys Tang is a professor of the Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages and the director of The Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She publishes widely in sign linguistics with primary data from Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), Chinese and HKSL development of Deaf and hard-of-hearing children, and Deaf/Hearing co-enrollment education. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education and Glossa. Currently, she is on the editorial board of Sign Language Studies and Deafness and Education International. She has also been invited to review papers and research grant proposals at the international level and advise two European Commission projects on sign language documentation and sign language recognition & translation. Her research impact activities are many. Crucially, she and her team of researchers collaborate with universities and Deaf associations in some Asian countries and develop Deaf training in sign language documentation and sign language teaching within The Asia Pacific Sign Linguistics Research and Training (APSL) Programme (http://www.cslds.org/apsl/) sponsored by The Nippon Foundation. Her research into sign linguistics and language development of Deaf and hard-of-hearing children has led her to experiment with a form of Deaf/Hearing co-enrollment education highlighting the critical role of bimodal bilingualism and Deaf teachers in mainstream education. Her approach of co-enrollment education to benefit Deaf and Hearing students has spread to Macau, China and Singapore.  

LECTURE TITLE:  “Promoting Bimodal Bilingualism in Mainstream Education for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing:  A Co-enrollment Approach”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: In recent decades, various attempts have been made to integrate sign language into mainstream settings to support deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students within an inclusive education framework. In this presentation, we will discuss the co-enrolment approach, which is an educational arrangement that involves a critical mass of DHH students receiving mainstream education alongside a group of hearing students in the same classroom. Under these circumstances, the language of instruction and social communication among the participants becomes a concern for educators. From a sociolinguistic standpoint, we argue that this community of language users in the classroom can tune into a shared set of languages and norms of language use when exposed to both signed and spoken languages in the school environment, with each language mode fulfilling different functions in the education and social interaction process. More importantly, this approach can potentially address the issue of information (in)accessibility in the delivery of the curriculum, hopefully leading to improved literacy and educational outcomes. We will illustrate this approach using a case study, reporting on some empirical findings derived from the Sign Bilingualism and Co-enrolment Education Programme developed in Hong Kong since 2006. 

Stefania Fadda

Stefania Fadda is President of the European Society for Mental Health and Deafness (ESMHD) and Director of the Assistance Center for Deaf and Deafblind Children (CABSS). Moreover, Dr. Fadda is part of the Expert Group on Mental Health for the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), and member of the committee on Deaf Plus for the Italian National Association of the Deaf (ENS).
She is a US-Italy Fulbright Commission consultant, which promotes the Cultural Exchange between Italy and the United States, on Deafness Studies.
Dr. Fadda graduated in Child and Adolescent Psychology and completed her specialization in Mental Health for Deaf Individuals and Early Intervention for Children who are Deaf and Deafblind.
After completing a four-year training specialization in Cognitive Psychotherapy, she became a Cognitive Psychotherapist and after four more years of teaching/training, she began teaching in Schools of Cognitive Psychotherapy (SPC).
As of 2021, became a member of the Didactic-Scientific committee for the Italian Society of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy (SITCC).
She has developed a particular interest in Psychotraumatology; is a Certified in Trauma Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) with Janina Fisher and a level II Sensorimotor Psychotherapist.
She has published books and articles on Psychology, Psychotherapy, Early Intervention and Mental Health for deaf and deafblind individuals.
Dr. Fadda’s foremost commitment is to remove barriers that limit the fundamental rights of deaf and deafblind individuals of all ages, to attain accessible and inclusive mental health services. For this reason, she contributed to the creation and dissemination of the Belfast Statement on Mental Health and Deafness, which emphasizes equality, freedom and dignity of all individuals in the field of Mental Health.
Her dream and commitment, is to enable that Mental Health for deaf people, be managed successfully overall by deaf professionals, with hearing colleagues as allies.

LECTURE TITLE: “Fostering Well-being in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children: Understanding Risk and Resilience Across Development”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: What allows a Deaf and hard of hearing child not just to adapt, but to thrive? This keynote explores mental health from a developmental, embodied, and relational perspective, moving beyond a deficit-based view to focus on the core conditions that nurture well-being.

Mental health begins in the body, in attuned relationships, and in environments that make communication fully accessible not only linguistically, but emotionally and sensorily. When Deaf and hard of hearing children grow in spaces where they feel safe, seen, and free to express themselves, these early experiences lay the groundwork for long-term psychological health.

Conversely, when these needs are unmet, especially in the early years, risk emerges not from hearing loss itself, but from disconnection: from the body, from others, and from the impossibility to express oneself freely and meaningfully.

Drawing on clinical practice and developmental research, this presentation invites a shift in how we understand the conditions that allow Deaf and hard of hearing children to grow well, not as a later intervention, but as a foundation built from the beginning. Resilience, in this view, is not something children develop alone. It grows in relationship, in presence, and in the deep recognition of who they are.

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Kate Rowley

Dr Kate Rowley is a deaf psycholinguist and is currently a lecturer based at the Deafness, Cognition, and Language (DCAL) Research Centre, University College London (UCL). Dr Rowley specialises in the language and literacy development of deaf children. Dr Rowley is keen to promote bi/multilingualism in deaf children and adults, which includes knowledge of one or more sign languages. She has been involved in the development of several assessments of British Sign Language (BSL) and studied language attitudes of deaf, BSL signers.

LECTURE TITLE:  “Bimodal Bilingualism in Action – At Home, in Education, and in Research”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: This keynote explores the growing momentum surrounding bimodal bilingualism and the use of both sign language and spoken/written language in the education of deaf children and young people. I will begin by introducing the concept of bimodal bilingualism and presenting emerging evidence of its cognitive, linguistic, and social benefits. This body of research challenges long-standing oralist, audist, and monolingual models that have historically shaped Deaf education. 

This body of research challenges the historically entrenched oralist, audist, monolingual, and ableist frameworks that have shaped deaf education, which continues to perpetuate systemic exclusion, linguistic microaggressions, and the marginalisation of the deaf community and deaf children as sign language users.

Central to this approach is the recognition that language acquisition is a shared responsibility, involving everyone, that is, families, practitioners, and researchers (it takes a deaf village to raise a deaf child). I will highlight the critical role of families in providing early and sustained access to sign language and the importance of practitioners, especially deaf professionals and deaf teachers, in creating thriving environments that are rich in language and pro-deaf culture and identity. Finally, I will discuss how researchers contribute by generating evidence-based practices and developing tools to assess and support language development in deaf children. 

By foregrounding the contributions of these three groups, my talk emphasises the importance of collaboration, representation, and deaf community leadership in shaping inclusive and effective approaches to language learning for deaf children.

Deborah Chen Pichler

Deborah Chen Pichler has been a member of the Department of Linguistics at Gallaudet University since 2002, where she teaches generative linguistics and studies language acquisition. She is interested in a wide range of multilingual signers, including child and adolescent bimodal bilinguals with deaf parents (in collaboration with Drs. Diane Lillo-Martin and Ronice Quadros), deaf adults who know more than one sign language (M1L2 unimodal or bimodal bilinguals; in collaboration with Dr. Helen Koulidobrova), and hearing adults who are learning their first sign language (M2L2 bimodal bilinguals). Her most recent project, Family ASL, is a collaboration with Drs. Diane Lillo-Martin and Elaine Gale that follows hearing parents who are learning American Sign Language (ASL) with their deaf children. This acquisition context is unusual because the children are learning the sign language (alongside a spoken language) as a first language while their parents are still novice second language learners of that sign language. Investigating multilingual signers has left Dr. Chen Pichler with a deep appreciation for the varied complexity displayed by all signers, not only those who learn their sign language(s) under optimal, “typical” conditions, but also those who learn them as heritage languages, as second languages, or with a delay.
Dr. Chen Pichler is a hearing L2 signer.

LECTURE TITLE: “More than (signed) words: The broader impact of hearing signer parents on deaf children’s development”

LECTURE ABSTRACT: It is unknown how many hearing parents of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) children learn a sign language; recent estimates range between 4-25%, although there is some indication that rates are increasing. Yet hearing parents are often warned that their signing will not help, and may even harm, their DHH children’s early development. A major argument is that hearing parents will not learn the sign language quickly enough or well enough to provide high quality input in that language. Critics further argue that learning a spoken language is hard enough for DHH children, and will be even harder if parents allocate precious time and resources to learning a sign language. These arguments are persuasive because they sound like common sense, but in fact they are based on very little research. While there are many studies comparing learning outcomes of DHH children from Deaf and hearing families, virtually none of them detail the parents’ sign language proficiency or the structure of the signed input that they provide to their DHH children. Even fewer of them consider interactional aspects of parents’ input (e.g. their ability to adapt interaction to their child’s visual needs), their attitudes towards deafness and signing, or their advocacy for their DHH children at home and at school. Such qualities are not strictly linguistic, but contribute to high quality input and thus have a critical impact on DHH children’s linguistic development. In this talk, I identify unexamined assumptions that underlie the argument against hearing parents signing. I consider relevant literature about the effects of non-native parental input in hearing immigrant populations before turning to very recent research on DHH children that measures not only hearing parents’ sign language proficiency but also their use of visual strategies that support DHH learning. Taken together, this new research provides evidence that the positive impact of hearing signer parents on their DHH children’s development goes beyond the parents’ sign language proficiency and should be encouraged more widely, contrary to prevailing assumptions. 

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