Professor Christopher Stone: Inaugural Lecture

The University of Wolverhampton is delighted to host an inaugural lecture with Professor Christopher Stone

This lecture examines how empirical research in sign language translation and interpreting (SLT&I) can inform, challenge, and reconfigure dominant assumptions about professional practice, ethics, and access. Drawing on historical, ethnographic, and applied research, the lecture situates SLT&I as a long‑standing social and institutional practice whose contributions have frequently remained obscured within both professional and academic narratives.

The lecture first traces a hidden history of SLT&I, demonstrating the continuity of Deaf–hearing interpreting practices across time and contexts, and foregrounding community‑based models. It then engages with research on values and ethics, contrasting community‑derived obligations with codified professional norms and interrogating tensions between institutional demands and relational accountability.

Empirical case studies from legal, healthcare, and educational settings are used to illustrate how interpreters operate within complex multimodal ecologies, negotiating meaning through cooperation, metalinguistic awareness, and in‑situ adaptation. These examples support a reframing of interpreters’ roles—not merely as conduits of language, but as situated actors embedded within social systems that can both enable and constrain access.

Christopher Stone is a Professor in Interpreting and Translation Studies and Director of the Institute for Community Research and Development (ICRD) at the University of Wolverhampton. His research focuses on signed language interpreting and translation, with particular attention to Deaf translators and interpreters, depiction in interpreted interactions, and access to justice and public services for Deaf communities. He has led and contributed to externally funded research supported by the AHRC, ESRC, and the British Academy, including current projects on Deaf inclusion in responses to domestic violence (SmartSafeSigning) with colleagues in Wolverhampton and Lancaster; and on Deaf mediators, interpreters and translators (DMIT working across international contexts with colleagues in Berlin and Toulouse. Professor Stone’s work builds on a long-standing engagement with Deaf communities and professional practice.

17:30 Refreshments
18:00 Lecture
19:00 Q&A
19:30 Networking
20:00 Close

This event will take place in the lecture theatre in the Millennium City Building(MC001).

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Host or Publisher Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Science (FABSS)