188 Deaf Epistemologies, Identity, and Learning
something to offer to everyone and welcomes new people and new ideas. Although
attending Gallaudet is a financial challenge for most international people and one
must have an adaptable, resourceful personality to become a successful member of
the university community, this empowering and supportive orientation is something
I have come to value and that I still often think about.
My first stay at Gallaudet was short because of financial constraints and my re-
sponsibilities at Ghent University to advance my doctoral study on Flemish deaf
empowerment. Determined to return, I formed a plan to apply for a research
grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation. My application was sup-
ported at Gallaudet by the International Internship program and the Deaf Studies
Department, and an American ASL-interpreting student volunteered to copyedit my
application. Not only was my grant application successful; I finished high enough
in the competitive ranking to be awarded a Francqui Foundation fellowship, which
enabled me to return to Gallaudet in 2005 for one year as a visiting scholar. In
2006 I received another award from the National Union in Support of Handicapped
people (an organization that functions under the auspices of the Rotary Clubs of
Belgium) that enabled me to complete my research at Gallaudet.
The mentoring of the late Dr. yerker Andersson was very important to my re-
search at Gallaudet, and many of my discussions with him focused on comparing
deaf people’s lives in Europe and the United States. As a former president of the
World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), he also had a rich experience and exper-
tise in “international deaf issues”; he taught a course on this topic at Gallaudet
that I attended. Dr. Andersson had visited Flanders a couple of times as WFD
president, and he had guided a group of Flemish deaf leaders during their visit
to Gallaudet, an occasion that had a significant impact on the Flemish deaf com-
munity. (For a research perspective on this impact, see Chapter 3.) In addition,
he had founded the Deaf Studies Department at the university and, as a deaf
professor, was a role model for me.
I had noticed that, like many other international deaf people, I had “woken up”
at Gallaudet as the cultural resources available there inspire the construction of
positive identities and the (re)telling of one’s life story from this strength-centered
perspective. I was inspired to research this phenomenon, which had not been stud-
ied before, to better understand it. At Ghent University, my cosupervisor, professor
Rik pinxten, encouraged me to develop a comparative study. I applied successfully
for a Gallaudet Research Institute Small Research Grant, which enabled me to study
empowerment in international deaf people at Gallaudet (see Chapter 4). It was
a great learning opportunity for me to translate my research to the U.S. context,
setting up a research study at a different university, recruiting international deaf
people, and conducting interviews. In these research activities, I learned about the
meaning of “support” as it is understood in the U.S. cultural context: International
people were happy to participate in the project and to support both research on the
topic and opportunities for international deaf people’s progress, as well as my own
academic endeavors.
The appreciation of my work, the practice of support by U.S. colleagues in
the field, being able to engage in research discussions in sign language, and