Mapping deaf academic spaces
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Mapping deaf academic spaces Dai O’Brien 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
This article focuses on the experience of signing deaf academics working in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK. I utilise a research method previously unused in this context, eco-mapping, to explore the ways in which deaf academics see themselves and their involvement in their home HEIs and in the academic field more generally. I review the available literature of deaf academic experience in the UK before using extensive quotes from research interviews to illustrate how the burden of making their own workplaces accessible usually falls on the shoulders of deaf academics. I also show that there is a lack of appreciation of the emotional labour and time demands that such work requires from the academics’ workplaces using a Lefebvrian understanding of time. I end with some reflections on the method used and on the implications of the barriers deaf academics and those from other linguistic minority communities can face in HEIs in the UK. Keywords Deaf . Academic identity . Sign language . Disability access . Eco-mapping . Lefebvre
Introduction While there has recently been interest in exploring the experiences of signing deaf1 academics who work in higher education institutions, there is still very little known about how they create, navigate and maintain their professional networks. This paper fills some of the gaps in the literature, through reporting on the results of using eco-maps as frameworks for conducting in-depth qualitative interviews. In this research, five current academics working in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK were interviewed. All were experienced academics who held post-graduate qualifications with teaching and researching experience, although not I use the term ‘signing deaf’ or simply ‘deaf’ in this article rather than the more traditional ‘Deaf’ to signal those who identify as culturally deaf and use sign languages as their first or preferred language. See Kusters et al. 2017 for more in depth discussion of this terminology.
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* Dai O’Brien [email protected]
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York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York YO31 7EX, England
Higher Education
all were active researchers at the time of the research. These interviews focused on mapping the professional networks of these deaf academics both inside and outside their own home HEIs. Eco-maps were used in this original application of the method not only as they are a recognised way of easily and logically mapping a participant’s social connections and communities2 but also as a visual method which made use of the deaf participants’ visucentrism, their visual way of perceiving and talking about the world around them (O’Brien and Kusters 2017). It is hoped that those who are not specifically interested or invested in the experience of deaf academics will read this article as a case study of the barriers and burdens that members of minorities working within HEIs in the UK can face. Many of the lessons drawn from this research project ca
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