Ulrike Zeshan

Ulrike Zeshan is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.

Biography Zeshan obtained an MA at the University of Cologne in 1996 and her PhD in linguistics from the same institution in 2000. 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.

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, negation, possession, quantification, and questions.

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.