I am a guest professor at the Department of Linguistics, specializing in sign language linguistics. My research interests include the early communication, language acquistion and literacy in deaf children, and the educational opportunites for deaf pupils. I have published and presented my research for both academic and mainstream audiences.
Previously, I was granted an FWO Junior postdoc at Ghent University to conduct research on literacy development in deaf primary school children (funded by the Flemish Research Foundation). In 2023, I was involved in the research project at KU Leuven on the establishment of bilingual education Dutch - Flemish Sign Language (O&O, funded by the Dept. of Education, Flanders). In 2020, the Academia Belgica and the FWO awarded my project on early gestures in deaf children for which I worked in collaboration with prof. Capirci at the Language and Communication Across Modalities laboratory in Rome (LaCAM, ISTC-CNR). In 2019, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Mayberry Laboratory for Multimodal Language Development (UC San Diego, USA). In 2018, I obtained an interdisciplinary PhD in Linguistics and in Health Sciences from Ghent University (supervised by prof. Van Herreweghe and prof. Van Lierde). During which I was a visiting scholar at Gallaudet University's VL2-lab (Washington DC, USA) working in close collaboration with prof. Chen Pichler, prof. Allen and prof. Simms.
I teach the course 'Inleiding tot de Vlaamse Gebarentaal' (Introduction to Flemish Sign Language) and have supervised Bachelor's and Master's papers from students enrolled in various departments (e.g. linguistics, logopedics, audiology, education and criminology). I also became a member of the Board of Directors of the Flemish Sign Language Center in 2020 and of the VGT Advisory Committee to the Flemish Government in 2021.
