ViCom’s Second Annual Meeting

8-10 November 2023

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften
Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg vor der Höhe

The conference languages were English and DGS. Interpretation between English and DGS was provided.

Participants at ViCom’s second annual meeting (Photo by Stefanie Wetzel)

Report on the second annual ViCom meeting, November 2023

From 8 to 10 November, the second annual ViCom meeting of our priority programme ViCom took place at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg.

On the eve of the meeting, accessibility consultant Liona Paulus held a workshop on DGS and Deaf Awareness. She raised awareness of working with deaf people and showed the everyday difficulties deaf people face. She taught the participants some basic signs and gave a brief insight into the grammar of DGS.

The next day the meeting officially commenced. It started with a short introduction and review of the past year by the two coordinators, Cornelia Ebert and Markus Steinbach. Afterwards, 9 of the projects presented an overview of their research of the past year. The talks were concluded with presentations of the short-term collaborations that have taken place over the past year. Then, the members met to discuss possible collaborations in an informal setting. The long day ended with a conference dinner at the Forschungskolleg, which provided an opportunity to end the day in a relaxed atmosphere.

The second day continued with presentations from the other 9 projects. Programme Manager Theresa Stender then gave an outlook for the coming year, followed by a presentation on ViCom’s social media activities by Social Media Manager Natascha Schuldes. The second day ended with an inspiring plenary presentation on the Inferential Typology in Sign Language (ASL) by our Mercator Fellow, Philippe Schlenker.

The third day consisted of two workshops. The first workshop, led by Heinrich L. Liesefeld, discussed salience in research. The second workshop, aimed specifically at PhD students, dealt with the question “How to do a PhD” and was hosted by Sabine Preusse.