TISLR 13 - the biggest international sign language linguistics conference at the University of Hamburg
7 October 2019
![Bühne des Hörsaals mit technischer Ausstattung für Dolmetscher](https://assets.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/instance_assets/fakew/8553653/tislr-bericht-8b993c5567b424d6ac4ac1bb7f7ad38e9c721a26.jpg)
Photo: BHF
From September 26th-28th 2019, more than 450 sign language linguists and scholars from related fields from all over the world came to Hamburg to present, learn about, and discuss the latest research results. The conference program included numerous lectures and over 180 poster presentations, which offered insights into current linguistic research results of various sign languages, some of which have hardly been documented so far such as from Papua New Guinea or Tibet. In addition to linguistic analysis, the conference focused on language processing, language acquisition and language teaching. A new format of the conference, SIGNopsis, offered young researchers the opportunity to present their own research results in a five-minute video. The evening program - Warming-Up, Conference Dinner and Senate Reception - on the different conference days was also very popular. The conference was organized by Prof. Dr. Annika Herrmann and Prof. Dr. Barbara Hänel-Faulhaber from the University of Hamburg, Prof. Dr. Christian Rathmann from the Humboldt University of Berlin and Prof. Dr. Markus Steinbach from the Georg-August-University of Göttingen. The four official conference languages German Sign Language (DGS), American Sign Language (ASL), International Sign (IS) and English (in spoken and written language) were projected simultaneously on a custom-made giant screen using special technology so that they could also be seen in the back rows. A total of almost 30 interpreters were on duty in turn.
The smooth running of the conference is due to the entire organization team with its more than 60 volunteer (!) student assistants from the study cities of Hamburg, Berlin and Göttingen.