Ulrike Zeshan is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of

signed languages Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the

University of Central Lancashire , mottoeng = "From the Earth to the Sun" , established = as Institution for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledgere-established 1992 (University status granted) , type = Public , chancellor ...

, UK.

Biography

Zeshan obtained an MA at the University of Cologne in 1996 and her PhD in linguistics from the same institution in 2000. Between 1999 and 2006 she held two postdoctoral positions: first at the

Research Centre for Linguistic Typology La Trobe University is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora. The university was established in 1964, becoming the third university in the state of Victoria a ...

Canberra Canberra ( ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and then (from 2003) at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

in the Netherlands. In 2006 she took up her current position as Professor at the University of Central Lancashire and Director (later Co-Director) of the International Institute for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies (iSLanDS) based at the same university. She has been an ordinary member of the Academia Europaea since 2014. In 2015, Zeshan was appointed an honorary

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) for "services to higher education and the international deaf community" as part of the

2015 Special Honours As part of the British honours system, the Special Honours are issued at the King's pleasure at any given time. The Special Honours confer the award of the Order of the Garter, Order of the Thistle, Order of Merit, Royal Victorian Order and the O ...

. In 2016 she was awarded an honorary professorship at the Amity University Gurgaon in India.

Research

Zeshan is a leading researcher in the field of sign language typology, and has worked on such phenomena as

kinship terms Kinship terminology is the system used in languages to refer to the persons to whom an individual is related through kinship. Different societies classify kinship relations differently and therefore use different systems of kinship terminology ...

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...

possession Possession may refer to: Law * Dependent territory, an area of land over which another country exercises sovereignty, but which does not have the full right of participation in that country's governance * Drug possession, a crime * Ownership * ...

, quantification, and questions. She has worked with UNESCO on the documentation of sign languages worldwide, including

endangered sign languages An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching and inv ...

. She has worked on sign languages of Ghana, India, Turkey, and Uganda. Between 2011 and 2016 she held a

European Research Council The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...

grant to investigate multilingualism and multilingual behaviours of sign language users.

Politics

Zeshan is also politically active, having stood as a Green Party

MEP MEP may refer to: Organisations and politics * Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, a political party in Sri Lanka * Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (1956), a former political alliance in Sri Lanka * Maison européenne de la photographie, a photography centre ...

candidate in the

North West England North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the ceremonial counties of England, administrative counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of ...

constituency in 2014, as well as in local council elections.

Selected publications

* Zeshan, Ulrike. 2000. ''Sign Language in Indo-Pakistan: A description of a signed language''. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. * Zeshan, Ulrike. 2003. Indo-Pakistani Sign Language Grammar: A Typological Outline. ''Sign Language Studies'' 3 (2), 157–212. * Zeshan, Ulrike. 2003. Aspects of Türk Isaret Dili ( Turkish Sign Language). ''Sign Language & Linguistics'' 6 (1), 43–75. * Zeshan, Ulrike. 2004. Interrogative Constructions in Signed Languages: Crosslinguistic Perspectives. '' Language'' 80 (1), 7–39. * Zeshan, Ulrike. 2004. Hand, head and face: negative constructions in sign languages. ''Linguistic Typology'' 8, 1–58. * Zeshan, Ulrike (ed.). 2006. ''Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Language''. Ishara Press. * Zeshan, Ulrike, and Connie De Vos (eds.). 2012. ''Sign languages in village communities: Anthropological and linguistic insights''. Berlin: De Gruyter.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zeshan, Ulrike Women linguists Linguists from Germany Living people Academics of the University of Central Lancashire University_of_Cologne_alumni Year of birth missing (living people)