Meet this year’s Deaf Studies Incubator Fellows 

What do you get when you put four Deaf scholars from around the world together in a historic house for a year? The Deaf Studies Incubator. 

The Incubator, which launched last year, provides financial and academic support to emerging scholars to work on interdisciplinary projects at Gallaudet. The goal is to create a stronger pipeline of Deaf Studies scholars. To help them connect to each other and the community, the fellows live together in Ballard House on Faculty Row and attend DST 703, Foundations in Deaf Cultural Studies (fellows are pictured above with author Rachel Kolb, center, recent guest of DST 703). They also receive structured mentorship from multiple faculty experts.

“[At Gallaudet] everyone will know who you are, and that’s special. It means you will get the support you need,” Provost Khadijat K. Rashid, ’90, said during an Incubator welcome event held at the end of August.

The four impressive scholars selected this year are Fulbright and Marshall Scholars and alumni of Duke, Yale, and Oxford. Meet Chisom Ofomata, Andhrea Tagle Readi, Sophia Williams, and Caroline Yuk.

Chisom Ofomata: addressing healthcare disparities

A Nigerian-American who grew up in Dallas, Texas, Ofomata aspires to become an OBGYN. This past May, she graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health. 

“As someone who has been in mainstream academic environments, I am very excited to experience a deaf and signing academic environment and to connect with the larger Gallaudet community,” she says. New to the area, she also looks forward to exploring the DMV. 

While here, Ofomata plans to apply Deaf studies and medical humanities to address healthcare disparities through two projects related to Deaf health. She will prepare her undergraduate senior thesis on the maternity health experiences of Black deaf and hard of hearing women for publication and dissemination. She will also work with the Center of Deaf Health Excellence (CDHE) on gathering stories about deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing women’s experiences with cervical or breast cancer screenings.

Ofomata will be working closely with Gallaudet’s Deaf Studies program, the Center for Black Deaf Studies (CBDS), and CDHE.

Andhrea Tagle Readi: researching inequities in labor markets

A native of Lima, Peru, Tagle Readi has focused her research on economic and educational disparities between deaf and hearing populations in the U.S. and has assisted with research on administrative barriers in access to information impacting Latine populations across several U.S. states.

She earned dual bachelor’s degrees in English and Public Policy from Rutgers University before completing her Master of Public Policy from Duke University. With this fellowship, Tagle Readi will build on her previous work and prepare to undertake a PhD in Sociology.

While at Gallaudet, Tagle Readi plans to do research on structural and organizational inequality at the intersection of race and disability. “I am currently considering studying specific social dimensions of work involving documented and undocumented Latine Deaf/HH populations in the United States,” she explains. 

She looks forward to conducting interdisciplinary research integrating Deaf Studies and Sociology, collaborating with faculty in the Deaf Studies program, the Center for Latine Deaf Studies, Nuestra Casa, and external faculty, as her project develops.

Sophia Williams: understanding narratives of illness in deaf communities

A multigenerational Deaf anthropologist-in-training, Williams earned dual undergraduate degrees in Sociology and Anthropology and in Criminal Justice from the Rochester Institute of Technology. As a Fulbright Scholar, she completed her Master’s in Medical History and Humanities at the University of York in the UK. After this fellowship, Williams plans to pursue a PhD specializing in cultural and medical anthropology.

Williams explains her proposed research “examines how narratives of illness and disability are constructed and negotiated within the deaf community.” She plans to use ethnographic methods and participatory workshops, such as zine-making and body mapping to do so. “I want to look at how deaf signers understand and navigate chronic and invisible illnesses through peer-based health education, community knowledge-sharing, and culturally grounded practices,” she says.

Being at Gallaudet is important to Williams on many levels, saying, “Gallaudet offers a rich historical and cultural foundation for my work, along with access to deaf-led mentorship, research centers, and archives that are key to my growth as an academic.” She also values informal learning and looks forward to being around the diverse range of signers on campus. “I know that these conversations will challenge, deepen, and expand my ideas,” she says.

Caroline Yuk: exploring how disability and technology co-construct one another

Yuk is a Research Fellow at the Global Disability Innovation Hub at University College London. She holds an MSc in Neuroscience and an MSc in Medical Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar. She was also a Henry Luce Scholar in Mongolia, where her placement was at the National Center for Maternal and Child Health in Ulaanbaatar.

“I’m interested in how neuroscientific theories of development, family decision-making, and technologies are entangled in shaping the futures of deaf children,” she explains. A natural home to support this research, Yuk says she is excited to learn from and work alongside Gallaudet’s talented researchers who are doing related work.

Another part of the fellowship Yuk enjoys is living at Ballard House, saying, “The residential aspect of the fellowship is very cool – living with the other fellows in a historic house on campus offers exciting and fun opportunities to build both personal connections and professional relationships in a shared environment!” Yuk also looks forward to experiencing research and scholarship in American Sign Language and strives to improve her own language skills through this immersion at Gallaudet.

The Incubator, which is funded by a Mellon Foundation grant, exists thanks to the efforts of several key players. Co-Directors Dr. H-Dirksen L. Bauman and Dr. Teresa Blankmeyer-Burke note that Lindsay Dunn, ’85, Dr. Erin Moriarty, Dr. Octavian Robinson, ’02 & G-’04, Provost Rashid, and Dr. Poorna Kushalnagar, ’93, have all been instrumental in the creation of the program.

Learn more about Gallaudet’s Deaf Studies program, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year.