The ASLIA National Conference 2010 will be held in Brisbane, Queensland, from Friday the 27th of August to Sunday the 29th.  The theme will be “Interpreters and… : exploring settings, interactions and best practice in interpreting”.  ASLIA is proud to announce that the ANC 2010 Keynote speaker is Dr Lorraine Leeson.

Lorraine Leeson has been the Director of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin since its establishment in 2001. She has twenty years experience of working with Deaf communities in a range of capacities at national and European levels. She was one of the first professionally trained ISL/English Interpreters in Ireland and holds a PhD in theoretical linguistics. Lorraine has practiced interpreting locally and internationally, with her work taking her from local tertiary educational environments and legal contexts to the national theatre of Ireland and from there, to the European Institutions and the United Nations. A highlight has been working for the European Union of the Deaf.

Lorraine’s research interests relate to the morphosyntax of signed languages, the sociolinguistics of ISL, and interpreting studies, with over 70 peer reviewed publications and presentations to date. In recent years, a key area of focus has been on the teaching, learning and assessment of signed languages and sign language interpreters, with particular attention to blended learning environments. This has led to a large-scale government funded project (SIF II – Deaf Studies in Ireland) to develop accessible blended learning content for a 4 year Bachelor in Deaf Studies at Trinity College, as well as European Union funded project work on a range of Deaf studies and sign language elearning projects (D-Signs, SIGNALL II, SIGNALL 3, and DeafVoc). In 2008, Dr. Leeson was named a Léargas Language Ambassador for her work on ISL and was elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin in 2009 on the basis of her research work to date.

For more information on the venue, see the Venue and Location page.