Deaf Academics 2017

18 September 2017, by Pamela Sundhausen

 

We were very fascinated by meeting more than  150 participants from different nations and working areas at the Deaf Academic Conference (DAC) 2017.  There were also deaf junior researchers. There were many important and interesting talks and exciting workshops. We were also very impressed by the Feedback Sessions  in which Ph.D. students presented their research and received useful hints and notes from the audience for their ongoing work. In some of the Feedback Sessions Okan Kubus played the debater’s role.

To sum it up, we could see in the sessions and during the event as a whole, that the future for deaf academics looks bright and many new job perspectives in the academic field were pointed out. Aside from the classic deaf academics’ working areas like Deaf Studies there were  talks from other science disciplines in which deaf academics have only recently entered, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and artistic disciplines. So this was the most important signal of this conference: To open up to deaf academics working in these other disciplines. 

We're looking forward to the next DAC 2019 in Iceland.