The chance to study the only master’s degree in deaf studies that existed in Europe at the time brought Belgian academic Annelies Kusters to the UK in 2006.
Since then, her academic career has flourished and she has risen to become the country’s first deaf professor in deaf studies at Heriot-Watt University; an achievement she said felt “surreal” when she thought back to all the deaf scholars who supported her over the years, including those on that initial University of Bristol programme.
The master’s itself has not fared as well and was discontinued along with Bristol’s once leading Centre for Deaf Studies, which shut in 2013. The UK still does not have an equivalent programme to replace it.
Once a “beacon for deep exploration into deaf communities, cultures and languages”, the centre’s absence is still felt across the continent, according to Professor Kusters. Its decline showed the “fragility” of teaching and research in deaf studies, she said, “particularly as universities scrutinise and pare down their offerings”, a climate in which “small, specialised programmes are inherently vulnerable”.
