The Team

Kearsy Cormier

Kearsy is a hearing sign language researcher originally from Texas, USA. From 2002 to 2005, she worked as a lecturer in sign language linguistics at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. She was the first researcher hired at at DCAL at University College London in 2006 and is now Professor of Sign Linguistics in Department of Linguistics and Director of DCAL (both within the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences). She is also Director of DCAL. She was director of the BSL Corpus Project in 2011, and was Principal Investigator on various projects involving the BSL Corpus, including the Directional Verbs Project (2012-2014), Digging into Signs Project (2014-2015), Language Attitudes Project (2017-2019), BSL Syntax Project (2016-2020) the Enactment Project (2019-2021), as well as Co-Investigator on ExTOL (2019-2023) and EASIER (2020-2023). For more information about Kearsy, visit her personal website. Email: k.cormier at ucl.ac.uk

Adam Schembri

Adam is a hearing sign language researcher originally from Sydney, Australia. Adam has worked as an English teacher, an Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreter, a researcher and lecturer. During 2000-2002, he was a lecturer in sign language linguistics at the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol. He then moved back Australia to work on projects on Auslan, before returning to the UK in 2006 to work at DCAL at University College London until 2010. He was Principal Investigator on the original BSL Corpus Project from 2008 to 2010 and was Co-Investigator on the Directional Verbs Project (2012-2014) and the BSL Syntax Project (2016-2019). He is now Professor of Linguistics at the University of Birmingham and Director of the SignMorph project. For more information about Adam, visit his academia.edu page. Email: a.schembri at bham.ac.uk

Heidi Proctor

Heidi ProctorHeidi is a hearing PhD student from the UK. In 2016 she completed an MSc in Linguistics specialising in Sign Language Studies at University College London. She is currently studying for a PhD at the same institution; her topic is the investigation of the syntax of the noun phrase in British Sign Language and the BSL Corpus forms a key resource for this. She is supervised by Dr Kearsy Cormier and Professor Ad Neeleman.

Matt Brown

Matt is a hearing PhD student, based at DCAL and UCL’s Department of Linguistics. He previously qualified as a BSL/English interpreter at the University of Leeds (2012) and completed an MSc Language Sciences degree at UCL (2015). In 2018, he began a PhD study on pragmatic effects in British Sign Language, funded by the London Arts & Humanities Partnership. He is supervised by Dr Kearsy Cormier and Dr Richard Breheny. For more information about Matt’s work, visit his ResearchGate page.

  • Ramas Rentelis – Research assistant, BSL Corpus Project
  • Sally Reynolds – Research associate, BSL Corpus Project
  • Rosemary Stamp – PhD student, BSL Corpus Project
  • Gabrielle Hodge –Postdoctoral researcher, BSL Corpus Project
  • Jordan Fenlon –Postdoctoral researcher, BSL Corpus Project
  • Neil Fox – Research assistant, BSL Corpus Project
  • Sannah Gulamani – Research assistant, BSL Corpus Project

  • Maxwell Barber – Research Assistant on BSL Syntax Project
  • Janet Beck – Belfast translator
  • Roger Beeson – Multi-region translator
  • Jeff Brattan-Wilson – Cardiff fieldworker and translation consultant
  • Mischa Cooke – Greater London fieldworker
  • Linda Day – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Carolyn Denmark – Bristol fieldworker and translation consultant
  • Clark Denmark – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Margaret Deuchar (Bangor University) Co-investigator
  • Jen Dodds – Multi-region translator
  • Helen Dunipace – Glasgow translator
  • Frances Elton (University College London) Co-investigator
  • Helen Foulkes – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Marie Franklin – Belfast consultant
  • Avril Hepner – Greater Glasgow fieldworker and translation consultant
  • Tom Johnston – Birmingham translation consultant and data collection assistant
  • Sarah Lawrence – Cardiff fieldworker
  • Sue Lee – Newcastle translator
  • Elizabeth Manrique – Research Fellow, Achieving Mutual Understanding in Signed and Spoken Conversation (BSL, Argentinian Sign Language, Argentinian Spanish)
  • Katie Mason – Research assistant
  • Dawn Marshall – Newcastle fieldworker and translation consultant
  • Evelyn McFarland – Belfast fieldworker
  • Cathryn McShane – Cardiff translator
  • Francis Murphy – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Melinda Napier – Greater London fieldworker, translation consultant & Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Delroy Nelson – Technician
  • Mark Nelson – Greater London fieldworker
  • Dónall Ó Baoill (Queens University Belfast) Co-investigator
  • Rosemary Oram – Manchester translation consultant
  • Tessa Padden – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Jacqueline Parker – Greater Manchester fieldworker
  • Kyra Pollitt – Bristol translator (and lead translator for the 2008-2011 Translation team)
  • Gary Quinn – Deaf Advisory Group member
  • Elvire Roberts – Birmingham translator
  • Sherratt Rowan – Multi-region translator
  • Kate Rowley – Deaf Advisory Group member, Research Associate on Language Attitudes Project
  • Mark Schofield – Muti-region translator
  • Robert Skinner – London translator
  • Gemma Smith – Bristol data collection assistant
  • Sandra Smith – Research assistant
  • Rachel Sutton-Spence (University of Bristol) – Co-investigator
  • Graham H. Turner (Heriot-Watt University) – Co-investigator
  • Alan Wendt (University College London) – Research Assistant on BSL Directional Verbs Project
  • Jenny Wilkins (née Beech) – Birmingham/West Midlands fieldworker
  • Bencie Woll (University College London) – Co-investigator
  • Ramon Woolfe – Multi-region translator