STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY
Stockholm University (SU) is home to Sweden’s most substantial research within science and human science, as well as the home of a number of internationally prominent research environments. Research in sign language has been carried out at the Department of Linguistics since 1972. Much of the current research focuses on sign language structure, lexicography and corpora for sign language, particularly Swedish Sign Language. A related development has been the availability of systems for fine-grained, searchable annotation of videos with signing. Other research issues are language acquisition of deaf children, language assessment, language teaching, multilingualism in deaf, deaf refugees, language acquisition of hearing second language learners. There is also a BA program in sign language interpreting.
Researchers from SU
- Prof. Johanna Mesch
Prof. Johanna Mesch is a deaf professor of Sign language at the Sign Language Section of the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University. She holds a PhD in sign language linguistics. Her PhD from 1998 was first in the world to look at deafblind communication from a strictly linguistic perspective. Her research work focuses on the sign language linguistics and the corpora in Swedish Sign Language. Her wider interests include tactile sign language and cross-linguistic comparisons of signed languages. She teaches tactile sign language, sign language linguistics, deaf history and culture, and Deaf studies. She worked with the leading sign linguists in Brasil as a visiting professor, at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Some ongoing projects are Nordic Signed Language Corpus Network and a series online workshops funded by a UCL Cities Partnerships Program with University College London.
- Ingela Holmström
Ingela Holmström, associate professor/senior lecturer, obtained her doctoral degree in Education at Örebro University 2013. She has been active at the Department of Linguistics at Stockholm University since 2014 and has worked on a number of different research projects. The project Mulder 2020-2023 is about the multilingual situation of deaf refugees in Sweden. Another project, the DHT project, is about the bilingualism of the deaf and hard-of hearing in special schools and municipal schools. She leads a project that deals with teaching Swedish Sign Language as a second language for hearing beginners.
- Magnus Ryttervik
Magnus Ryttervik is a deaf lecturer of sign language and interpreting at Stockholm University. He received a MA degree in sign language linguistics in 2016. He teaches Swedish Sign Language to students in the BA program of sign language and interpreting, sign language for beginners, and introduction to Swedish Sign Language in theory and practice for employees in special education.
- Josephine Willing
Josephine Willing is a deaf lecturer of sign language and interpreting at Stockholm University. She received a MA in sign language linguistics in 2020. Her main responsibility is teaching Swedish Sign Language to students in the BA program of sign language and interpreting, sign language for beginners, and introduction to Swedish Sign Language in theory and practice for employees in special education. She is involved in various tasks relating to sign language, such as working on sign language evaluations within a pilot project in collaboration with the National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools. She also constructs sentence levels in the Swedish Sign Language Dictionary.