SOAS have a growing interest in SL linguistics – apparently.

– post –

The Department of Linguistics at SOAS is pleased to announce the availability of several (partial or full) scholarships for students wishing to undertake PhD research.
SOAS Linguistics Department is the oldest linguistics department in the UK, founded in 1932. We have a strong profile in theoretical, descriptive, comparative and applied linguistics (including language pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and translation) and world-leading expertise in the study of the languages of Africa and Asia. We are home to the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project and offer a very strong research environment in language documentation of endangered languages.

For more information about the department and our research, please visit http://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/.

The following funding opportunities are available for students embarking on their PhD in 2012/13. The deadline for applications is 31 January 2012.

AHRC Studentships (subject to confirmation by the AHRC) Linguistics (1 Studentship) and Middle Eastern and African Languages and Cultures (1 Studentship) http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/ahrc-block-grant-partnership-studentships-bgp.html

SOAS Research Scholarships (UK/EU fees/stipend) (2 in Languages & Cultures) http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/soas-research-student-fellowship.html

SOAS Doctoral Scholarships (UK/EU fees only, f/t or p/t) (2 in Linguistics) http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/soas-doctoral-scholarships-2012-faculty-of-languages-cultures-only.html

Wolfson Scholarship (UK residents only, £25,000 p.a.) (1 in Language) http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/wolfson-postgraduate-scholarships-in-the-humanities.html

For further information about PhD study in Linguistics at SOAS, please contact our Research Tutor, Prof. Peter Austin at pa2@soas.ac.uk, or the Head of Department, Dr Lutz Marten at lm5@soas.ac.uk any time.

For other funding opportunities at SOAS, see http://www.soas.ac.uk/registry/scholarships/.

And I do so with news… I have reinforcements In the last week, the long awaited replacement Client Support Officer has started at work. The hope is that… in time… he will learn to do everything that I’ve been doing, and effectively replace me – freeing me up to do other (and more interesting) things.

His arrival has, however, brought an interesting challenge to light – which is the amount of time and effort that it takes to effectively train and mentor someone.

This is a challenge that I suffered from… from the other end – as a PhD student.

I’m sure some academics are very good at passing on their experience, but as a PhD student – there was literally no mentoring or training in the academic post-doctoral game. There was knowledge there – masses of it, but it was like a sea of information that was just ‘out there’; accepted as common knowledge by those already involved, but inaccessible to the novice… and not made accessible either.

It wasn’t really until I’d finished my PhD and was back working at the university and able to actually be part of a research application that information on how things actually worked came my way. But by then, I was somehow expected to already know how to play the game and to be part way down the (particularly post-doc) road. So from no knowledge, I had to quickly try and catch others up on a near overhang learning curve.

If it were not for a few friends who have been there, done that, and have been able to fill in some of the blanks, I’d have been completely swamped.

Even now, several years post-PhD, I’ve still not got the practical experience of funding applications – something that I’ve got to fit into the next couple of years.

So… about to prepare my presentation for the AAG in which I’m talking about the past, present and future of Deaf geography research – one thing that’s very present in my consciousness is the question of how we can prepare future generations of researchers so that they are not as ill-equipped or unprepared as us.

It may be, that for Deaf geographies research to succeed, we (I, as an ‘older researcher’ maybe) have to partially sideline our (my) own ambitions in favour of future researchers…

It’s almost certainly true that – if we ignore the need to correctly inform, train, mentor and guide future researchers – a body of research will simply not build and, rather than a sustainable field, Deaf geographies will continue to be little more than a collection of individual research projects that just happen to coalesce around the subject.

One good thing about only posting sporadically to this blog is that, when I disappear for a few days, no-one worries.

The last few days of absence were, unfortunately, a  bit more serious than me just being busy.

I fell off my bike on the 28th November into the path of a Ford Focus, which then drove over me.

Somewhat miraculously – having spent a few harrowing moments staring at the underside of the engine… and then a few uncomfortable days getting the use of my ribs back, less than a couple of weeks later, I’m back at work…

Thanks to all who have expressed good wishes.

I’ve had a good think about priorities in the time off, and while nothing has changed particularly, I’m even more determined to make sure that I don’t simply drift – ticking off years of time without actually getting back to the heart of what I want to do.

My friend Austin Kocher recently wondered… “Is there anything more exciting than learning something new?”

I don’t think there is… unless, perhaps when that learning then takes you to passing on that knowledge to others and seeing them also learn it, engage with it, and then take ownership of it, and start to move it in new directions.

Research, writing, dissemination, collaboration, exploration, discovery.

Love it

Monday 27th February.

12.40 – 2.20: Deaf Geographies I – Foundations for Deaf Geographies

2.40 -4.20: Deaf Geographies II – Analyzing Deaf Geographies

4.40 – 6.20: Deaf Geographies III -The Future of Deaf Geographies

If last year is anything to go by, the wealth of information and research will be amazing, and I’ll be so excited by the end I’ll barely be able to sleep.

I’m presenting in the first session, so lots of time to kick back afterwards, relax and listen.

Having secured the conference fees from the AAG, I’ve now been told that work are going to contribute something to get me to New York. This is wonderful news, particularly since part of the ‘new vision’ that I described yesterday requires me to develop a way to hold in (tension is the wrong word, it suggests that there is a tension… maybe balance would be a better one) balance the two roles that I currently play within the University (IT services and Academic) and, if possible, work them together.

Unless the university adopts a revolutionary new approach to many things (I can’t, for example, be a member of academic staff and support staff – different pay grades and structures and different rules on what each can do apply), one of the only ways to constructively bridge the two areas is to present ideas that do just that, at fora like the AAG.

Last night, upon hearing the news that I’d got partial funding, and some more on the way *fingers crossed*, I got the go ahead from home to attend – no small grace when it involves leaving Jo at home with a (will be then 23 month old) toddler for a week on her own.

Big Apple – here I come

Doherty argues that with :

“Transparency playing as a poor substitute for truth; and raw Information supplanting the curiosity-driven demands for critical knowledge that are the primary concern of a serious university, there exist at least two universities within each institution: an “Official” one and a “Clandestine” one.” (text slightly adapted)

He goes on to detail all the things that the Clandestine university does but cannot admit to. Things which are fundamental to keeping the heart of knowledge-generation beating, but which don’t officially exist.

• Things like spinning grant applications to the funder’s specifications and then subverting the grant to fund research that the researcher originally wanted to do, but wouldn’t have been able to do because of the political set of the funder.
• Things like subverting the ‘aims, objectives, structure, delivery, evaluation’ model of lecturing and, instead, using classrooms as places to really engage with students and their learning,

Doherty argues that these are things that actually keep universities going, and students learning – but that are anathema to the painted and polished façade that the Official university seeks to (perhaps, now, has to) present – and so have to be hidden.

Is this new? That’s how it appears to me – although I’ll admit that my perspective is probably skewed by my background.

I grew up in Cambridge, where the template of a very ‘Monastic’ University was still clear in the daily academic lives around me. Cambridge University was – in my mind – a riotous and unruly mix of genius, research, teaching anddiscovery; full of learnèd eccentrics all barely fitted to life outside the ivory asylum…  but somehow, there, enabled and even encouraged to dream, and do, and learn, and achieve amazing things within a structure that was maintained by a service staff of porters, buildings and councils.

As a child, I aspired to be one of those academics… free to think, to teach, to learn, to wonder, to ponder – while the mundane-ness of business was taken care of by someone else.

… to an extent, that’s how I planned my return to academia – “Find a job, get it… do it well, stay there… be happy, be free”.

However, now that I work in one of the UK’s biggest universities, only one rung below Cambridge really in terms of its research prestige, I appreciate that the halcyon days of academic freedom, seen through the eyes of a Cambridge teenager, may never really have existed beyond those hallowed towers. May not even inside those hallowed towers.

It’s great to argue that freedom should be the lot of every academic. However, where I am, I have to face the gritty reality that it’s not going to simply ‘happen’, and fight to make the best of what’s there.

My old vision is not enough. I need a new vision – a new approach – a subversive approach.

One which will involve being a master of the Clandestine, whilst also becoming a champion of the ‘Official’.

Tricky.

There were two options:

1. See what I can apply for from this end

2. See what I can apply for from the other end

From this end, the choices are university funds, funding council grants or things like the Bristol Alumni association.

University funds are no longer available – we’d now be expected to write conference attendance into a project grant, but I don’t have one of those.

Funding council’s don’t offer conference travel any more.

Bristol Alumni are fine if you’re still a student – but I’m not.

Strike one.

From the other end then? I approached Austin, one of the conveners of the sessions at the AAG to find out if they had sought the formal sponsorship of any of the specialist groups.

Yes came the answer – Communication Geography, Cultural Geography, and Qualitative Geography.

I found the contact details for them, put my case in writing and asked “Please can I have some money”

“No”, “no” and thrice “no” came the replies.

Strike two.

So – just on a whim, I wrote to the director of the Disability Specialist Group and told her that – although I’m not ‘disabled’ or Deaf, and although my work explicitly rejected the notion that Deaf people are disabled and we weren’t sponsored by them at all – the work of the Deaf Geographies group was enormously relevant to their own work and that they would ignore it at their peril. Oh, and “please can I have some money”.

Without further ado, she put together an application to the AAG Enrichment Fund for me (the deadline being as short as it was – I was actually asleep on British Summertime as she was pillaging my CV and submitting it) – supported its submission with a letter, and won me $420.

That funding now gives me the lever to go back to my own University and try and gear some more difficult-to-get funding with proof, now, that my work is considered worthy.

Success, through the Disability angle, though has left me with rather mixed feelings.

I’m not sure whether I feel like a crusader who has manipulated the system to get something that should have been freely available, or whether I feel like a scoundrel who has slept with the enemy.

And what for the ideological import. Is this a first step towards conquering Disability studies for Deaf knowledges, or a selling-out to an easy paradigm that simply got me what I needed the quickest way?

I’m slightly appeased by the fact that the funding didn’t come from the Disability group itself, but from the AAG’s central enrichment fund.

But that doesn’t actually make the tension of what I’ve done any easier to untangle.

Then I heard that it might be possible to sign up and then ‘find that I couldn’t go any more’ and send in my submission on film… so I signed up.

I’ve just heard that the AAG don’t allow pre-recorded presentations, and that there is no way to webcast into the proceedings.

So, having paid my sign-up, I now have to work out whether to lose some of that, and revert to the original plan, or whether to try and get there anyway.

But doesn’t it seem ironic that the world’s biggest geography conference – full of people who will be utterly committed to the preservation of the planet and the reduction of carbon footprints – require me to fly to New York to present?

The only justification I can see for that kind of approach is that it’s more important to run the AAG annual meeting with the prestige and funding that it generates, than it is to commit to innovate new approaches to conferences and pioneer them in the field that appears to be most relevant.

Next year, I shall go to the AAG, and deliver a paper on Greening Events – http://greeningevents.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/

Or perhaps I will offer an abstract in the form of a letter that explains why I have unexpectedly not turned up to present my paper – for the sake of the planet.

Until then… Long live the status quo!

It makes me think that we’ve slipped back to the 1960s again.

Doing the background for my PhD, I read about the 1970s shift from considering disabled people as ‘those with impairments’ to ‘those who are disabled. The shift was forced as those considered ‘disabled’ found a way into academia and started to represent themselves. It was a way of reminding policy makers and others acting to (supposedly) ‘help them’ that the location of the ‘problem’ was not their bodies, but the way that their bodies were dis-enabled by society – and as a way of forcing the ‘help’ to be delivered on that basis rather than as blame heaped on broken bodies (and the consequent requirement for the person in that body to somehow aim to ‘fix it’) .

The argument went that there’s no such thing as an ‘impairment’ – all there is is ‘dis-enabling’; society’s failure to validate the person inside a body’s use of that body in the way that they want to to achieve the things that they want to achieve.

So if what I was told is true – the UN’s wording is backwards looking.

What worries me more though is the power that the UN has to hold people to that model, even if it’s inaccurate.

With their hands firmly grasping the reigns of global ‘Human Rights’ – they are essentially in a position that allows them to torture any movement into a discursive straight jacket of their own making.

So not only does the Deaf community have to wrestle with suggesting that they are ‘disabled’ – they also have to fight the fact that those who define ‘disability’ do not consider them ‘dis-abled’ = verb, but as ‘having a disability’ i.e. inhabiting inherently broken bodies.

No wonder the CI industry is enjoying such rich pickings.

And people wonder why there are such strong separatist and utopian strands to DEAF space…

*sigh*

—

A similar post, with a more clearly spatial bent is available at http://deafspace.wordpress.com

So, a recently mail caught my eye asking why it was that there was no method for posting in sign language – either ASL, BSL or any other.

The idea that this is even a sensible suggestion is one that should make the hearing world sit up and take notice. The idea that a group of internationally dispersed academics could conduct academic discussions in a number of different sign languages and all make sense of each other is something that the hearing world should marvel at. Sign languages, however you theorise them, as long as they are natural languages and not some form of signed spoken system like SSE or Cued Speech, are able to flow towards each other in the iconic which still carrying nuanced meaning in a way that spoken languages (with their so-easily-broken point and click sound=meaning reference system) could never do.

But there’s another thought that makes the question pertinent – which is where are the V-lists?

We now have the web tech to create v-lists… so why aren’t we doing it? You wouldn’t want to carry the video in the mail, it would be too big, but you could simply refer people back to a URL on a site like YouTube?

But lists are easy, you just click ‘reply’ and have done with it.

Perhaps Twitter is the answer as you can record the video direct from within the tweet on something like Tweetdeck

What would it take to set up a ‘list’ that worked with video?