Erin Wilkinson is helping shape the future of signed language research

As one of the world's few deaf tenure-track faculty members, and even fewer in the linguistics field, Erin Wilkinson, full professor and associate chair of linguistics at The University of New Mexico, is helping shape the future of signed language grammar through her research, global partnerships, participation in international conferences and editorial services for world-renowned sign language academic journals.

Her research broadly focuses on bilingualism, language documentation and description, language change and variation, typology and planning and policy in highly diverse signing communities.

"Studying deaf individuals and their lives can help us better understand humanity as a whole," said Wilkinson. "We can learn more about human connection, resilience and how the brain works."

For Wilkinson, connecting with other deaf faculty members is a natural process of being one of the few deaf research professors in the world, and the only one who is tenure-track faculty at UNM. This creates opportunities, locally, nationally and globally that allow her to bring international expertise to UNM and her classroom.

Wilkinson began as a tenure-track faculty member at the University of Manitoba, Canada, in 2009. She moved to UNM in 2018.

Since then, she has taught nine undergraduate and graduate courses, and five reading and graduate problems courses at three different institutions.

She has also taught signed language linguistics, bilingualism and typology at various summer schools around the world, from Kabul, Afghanistan, Legon, Ghana, Hamburg, Germany and Leiden, the Netherlands.

During these teaching experiences and others, she has created deep ties to deaf communities across three continents from Europe, Africa and North America, with consistent reoccurring requests to continue to teach internationally.

"I have had the opportunity to meet individuals from across the world and learn so much about their work and research," she said. "These individuals have influenced my work and have helped shape my growth and opened opportunities for me, just as much as I have done for them. Without them, I would not be here."

She holds two prestigious editorial positions. One position is for Sign Language Studies, a 50-year-old foundational academic journal in the field. This role continually places her at the epicenter of research advancing the field and earns her global recognition.

The second is for the Cambridge Press in their Elements series on Sign Languages. This publication aims to fill gaps in signed language research, enabling contributors to write more in-depth about specialized topics.

These editorial positions, along with her UNM faculty position, have created mentorship opportunities with countries that have limited academic resources, as well as with her students.

"I believe that mentoring fosters meaningful relationships with students, colleagues and community members," Wilkinson said. "Which can lead to new discoveries and innovation through the network of associates."

Colleagues continually reach out to her for advice or to ask her to participate in projects.

Recently, she was invited to be one of the 20 highly selective participants at the Sign Language Genetics workshop in Paris, France. For this workshop, she facilitated a discussion forum with scholars from different fields, including genetics, medical history, history of deaf people, language documentation and description, language typology and language modeling, to better understand how signed languages have formed and evolved. Working with geneticists who found deaf genes, the group was able to trace its origins back at least 10,000 years and up to 30,000 years ago, to examine how past and modern deaf mobility patterns in various documented sign language communities around the world have shaped and continue to shape signed language grammar and the variations as we know nowadays.

Following the workshop, she attended a symposium where she presented a paper in collaboration with her UNM undergraduate student, Ashley Beard and her colleague, Angoua Tano, Ph.D. that found evidence of some structural similarities in the closed systems of name signs in American Sign Language (ASL) and Langue des Signes de Côte d'Ivoire (LSCI). This comparative study on name signs in ASL and LSCI shows how deaf mobility can transcend great distances and shape signed language grammar through language contact.

Even here at UNM, colleagues continually reach out to her for assistance.

"My student research assistants and I recently asked Erin to sit with us and look over some data," said Jill Morford, chair of UNM's Linguistics Department. "She did not hesitate to help us, and she was able to immediately point out some areas we hadn't noticed. She provided guidance and great advice on how we could move forward with our project."

Throughout her work, Wilkinson acts as a bridge builder. Focusing on how her efforts can help deaf communities around the world, all while leading with humility.

"I see my job as either to open or keep the doors open for other deaf scholars to go through," she said.