News

Dr Mary Brennan: promotor of sign language

(10 August 2005)

Tributes have been paid to Dr Mary Brennan, former co-director of the Durham University Deaf Studies Unit, who has died after a long illness.

Dr Brennan spent nine years at Durham (1987-98) in a long international career devoted to deaf people, and helping to promote British Sign Language more widely among the deaf and hearing communities, and to establish it as a recognised language.

With colleagues at Durham she set up the first taught MA courses in Britain in the Teaching of Sign Languages and other related topics. Her research contributed to the growth of BSL interpretation, and while at Durham she helped to produce the first BSL-English Dictionary, one of the prime projects of the Deaf Studies Unit.

David Brien, her co-director at the time, said Mary Brennan had made an outstanding contribution to the study of sign languages. She would be remembered in many countries for her integrity, compassion and commitment to justice.

Dr Brennan, who was born in Gateshead and attended Newcastle University, returned to Edinburgh in 1998. At the time of her death she was Reader in Deaf Studies at the Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh University.