Rose is a hearing researcher of sign language linguistics, working as a lecturer at Bar Ilan University. Rose came to Israel in 2014 from the UK, where she was born. She completed her PhD on variation and change in British Sign Language, using the British Sign Language Corpus Project. When she arrived in Israel, she worked at the University of Haifa with Prof. Wendy Sandler for five years, collecting data from Israeli Sign Language, Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language and Kufr Qassem Sign Language. 

As part of the current project, Rose is interested in variation in young sign languages and why people sign in different ways.

Sara was born deaf and grew up in Algeria. She completed her MA from the University of Central Lancashire in England, focused on the sign language of Algerian Jews.

Sara started as a PhD student on the corpus project in 2021. Her research focuses on language variation and change in Israeli Sign Language. She is also responsible for Israeli Sign Language at the Ministry of Education; she teaches ISL, trains sign language teachers and works as a lecturer in the translator training program in Bar-Ilan University.

Ora was born deaf into a deaf family. She is proficient in four languages: Israeli Sign Language is her native language, followed by Hebrew, American Sign Language, and English.

Ora is a graduate of the Interactive Media Design program from the Technion school for practical engineers and has an undergraduate degree from the University of Haifa.

Previously she worked at the University of Haifa as a research assistant for Prof. Wendy Sandler from the Sign Language Research Laboratory, and in an additional project with Prof. Rama Novogrodsky from the Department of Communication Disorders.

Ora had been part of the project since the beginning and had various roles: Participant recruiter, interviewer, and national interviewer coordinator. In addition, Ora was responsible for running and maintaining the project’s social media accounts, as well as the project’s branding and creating its logo.

Shlomi was born into a deaf family. He is a sign language teacher and a deaf-blind translator.
In the Corpus Project, Shlomi started as an interviewer in Tel Aviv and the centre region by recruiting participants; he then started training new interviewers, and now Shlomi is active on our team as a research assistant.

In his current position, Shlomi focuses on coding and analysis of linguistic data, as well as guiding other research assistants.

Karin was born into a deaf family. She lives in Ofakim in the South of Israel and had worked in the corpus project as a participant recruiter as well as an interviewer in the Be’er Sheva District. In addition, Karin assisted the Haifa team, and today she continues to work with us as a research assistant.

Avichai was born and raised in Jerusalem. He is a third-generation deaf person, born into a deaf family and is a native signer of Israeli Sign Language. Avichai is a yeshiva student in a kolel, and filled the position of a participant recruiter and an interviewer in the Jerusalem District.

In addition, we were happy to also have Avichai as a filmed participant.

Debi is deaf, born to a deaf family, and a native signer of Israeli Sign Language. She was born in Haifa and has lived in the north of Israel for her whole life.

Debi has an undergraduate degree from the Department of Human Services and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies (in psychology and sociology) and has been working as a research assistant in the Sign Language Research Laboratory led by Prof. Wendy Sandler at the University of Haifa.

Debi joined the corpus project as a participant recruiter and as an interviewer in the Northern District. Her deep familiarity with the deaf community in the north of Israel greatly contributed to the project’s success.

In addition, we were delighted to also have Debi as a filmed participant.

Dana was born deaf. Her primary language is Israeli Sign Language. She grew up in Ofakim in the South of Israel, where she currently lives. In the corpus project, Dana worked as a research assistant in Be’er Sheva and the South regions, recruiting participants for the study and interviewing participants online and live.

In addition, we were happy to also have Dana as a filmed participant.

Eliran is a third-generation deaf person who lives in Be’er Sheva, capital of the Negev.

In the corpus project, Eliran worked in data collection and was the first interviewer in the South. Nowadays Eliran is active in social clubs across Israeli and also teaches Israeli Sign Language.

Doron is a hearing person and a certified Israeli Sign Language interpreter since 2015. 

He holds a BA and a teaching certificate in special education from Tel Aviv University, with ten years of experience working with the Israeli deaf community in a variety of fields, including seven years of teaching at a school for deaf and hard of hearing students with additional challenges in Tel Aviv.

Doron joined the corpus project as a research assistant, working on video editing and linguistic coding of the data.

Shai joined the corpus project in 2020 as an undergraduate hearing research assistant after taking Dr. Stamp’s class about Sign Language Linguistics. She primarily worked with translations, data organization and various administrative tasks such as maintaining the project’s social media presence. Sadly, Shai Pipko passed away in 2023. Her passing was a terrible shock to the team.

Gregg is a hearing research assistant, originally from the U.S. He studied Linguistics and Psychology at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. After becoming an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter, Gregg circled the globe for the next 10 years interpreting at local and international venues. In 2014 Gregg relocated to Tel Aviv, Israel to enjoy the eastern Mediterranean sunsets. In 2023 he joined the corpus team, assisting with the analysis of ISL data.

Marina is a passionate hearing Argentinian linguist currently doing her MA at Bar Ilan University in Israel. She joined the corpus team as a research assistant in 2023. Her main duties include coding sign language data (phonology) and video editing.

Muneera is a hearing research assistant with a passion for languages, she speaks six languages (Arabic, Hebrew, English, Spanish, Japanese and Israeli Sign Language) at different levels. She has a BA in English Linguistics and Literature and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Haifa. In addition, she has four years of experience as a research assistant at the Sign Language Research Lab, University of Haifa. She joined our team in 2023 and now her main duties are translating data into three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and English.

Shiran is hearing and has BSc and MSc degrees in Bioinformatics-Computational Biology from Bar-Ilan University.

She joined the Corpus project in 2023 as a computational researcher. She works on motion-capture data collected from deaf ISL signers and performs advanced analyses to gain insights into the movement of sign language users.

Nitzan is a hearing person and a certified Israeli Sign Language interpreter since 2019.
She holds a BA in Linguistics and Foreign Literature from Ben Gurion University.
Nitzan joined the corpus as a research assistant, working on linguistic coding of the data.

Adam Schembri is a hearing professor of linguistics at the University of Birmingham, UK, but originally from Australia. His research interests focus on the linguistics of sign languages, particularly British Sign Language and Auslan (the majority sign language of the Australian deaf community). He has published work on a range of topics, including the lexicon, morphosyntax, typology, and sociolinguistics of sign languages. Adam is the international consultant on the Corpus of ISL project.

Hagit is a hearing professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa and Head of the Computational Human Behavior Lab. Her research focuses on understanding human behavior using Computer Vision and Machine Learning tools. Hagit has been working in collaboration with the Corpus of ISL team since 2020. Using a combination of motion capture technology and cluster analysis, we have together been measuring and analyzing the movements of signers to determine whether there is a dialect in some ISL signers.