Biography

Julia Gspandl is a sign language researcher and sociolinguist at the Plurilingualism Research Unit of the University of Graz. She studied at the University of Graz and the University of Vermont for her BA and MA and was part of the scientific team for the UNESCO World Report of Languages. Her research interests include sign language acquisition, the intersection of sign language and gesture and sociolinguistics with a focus on minority languages.

As part of her work at the Plurilingualism Research Unit, she completed her PhD on deaf migrants and their unique semiotic repertoires and languaging capacity. For her dissertation project, she was awarded the Theodor-Körner-Preis 2022.