Goedele De Clerck

Biography

Dr. Goedele A. M. De Clerck  specializes in interdisciplinary research with deaf people and sign language communities on their cultural diversity and wellbeing. As a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow, she is affiliated with the Social Research with Deaf People (SORD) group at the University of Manchester. She holds a PhD in Comparative Sciences of Culture (anthropology) from Ghent University (2009).

Her research has focused on deaf communities’ emancipation, empowerment, identity dynamics, sustainable development, cultural diversity, cross-cultural perspectives, and processes of learning (epistemologies). Apart from generating projects in Flanders, she has extensive experience in working with sign language communities around the world. During her doctoral and postdoctoral research at Ghent, she was a visiting scholar at Gallaudet University (USA), the University of Buea (Cameroon), and Kyambogo University (Uganda).

She has published as author and co-editor in international journals, books and edited volumes, including most recently Exploring Deaf Epistemologies: Comparative Studies in Identity, Empowerment, and Learning (Gallaudet University Press, 2016); the Proceedings of ‘Sign Language, Sustainable Development, and Equal Opportunities’, a 2014 international conference in Ghent (Gallaudet University Press, 2016, edited with Dr. Peter V. Paul from Ohio State University, USA); and the volume Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook (De Gruyter Mouton, in press, edited with Julie Bakken Jepsen and Prof. Bill McGregor from Aarhus University, Denmark, and Dr. Sam Lutalo-Kiingi from Kyambogo University).

Qualifications

PhD Comparative Sciences of Culture, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University/Centre for Intercultural Communication and Interaction, Belgium, 1 October 2003 – 20 May 2009

MA Linguistics and Literature, Highest Distinction, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy/Ghent University, Belgium, 1 October 1999 – 21 September 2001