Josep Quer - Biography#

Josep Quer is ICREA Research Professor affiliated with the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University since 2009 and he leads the Laboratory of Catalan Sign Language (LSCLab). He was a professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam in 2007 and 2008. Previously, he was ICREA Research Professor in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Barcelona from 2002 to 2007. During that time he pursued a new line of research in theoretical linguistics of sign languages. In collaboration with the Federation of the Deaf in Catalonia, he set up the research group GRIN, which under his leadership developed the Basic grammar of Catalan Sign Language (2005), the first grammatical description of the language. He has specialized in sign language linguistics next to his research on Romance languages and Greek as a formal linguist.

He received his PhD in Linguistics in 1998 at Utrecht University (Netherlands) and the title of Master in grammatical theory at UAB in 1993. He graduated in Classics (Greek) at the University of Barcelona (1988). He was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utrecht (1998) and UAB (1998 - 2000), and Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam (2000 - 2001). He was Joan Coromines Chair at the University of Chicago (2010). EFL International Chair, Paris (May-June 2019, Université Paris Diderot 7). Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) (2021 - 2022, 2023 - 2024).

He has published articles in several international journals such as Language, Cognition, Lingua and Probus and chapters in collective works such as Sign Language: An International Handbook (2012), Cambridge Language Survey of Sign Languages (2010), Gramàtica del català contemporani (2002), Semàntica (coord. MT Espinal, 2002), The Blackwell Companion to Syntax (eds. Everaert et al., 2005, 2nd edition 2017), SAGE Deaf Studies Encyclopedia (eds. Gertz, Boudreault & Golson), Blackwell Companion to Semantics (eds. Gutzmann, Matthewson, Meier, Rullmann, & Zimmermann, 2021), Semántica (coord. MT Espinal, 2014), The Oxford Guide to Romance Languages (eds. Ledgeway & Maiden, 2016) or Manuel des modes et modalités (eds. Haßler & Mutet, 2022). He has co-edited the SignGramBlueprint. A Guide to Sign Language Grammar Writing (2017) and, together with R. Pfau and A. Herrmann, the Routledge Handbook of Theoretical and Experimental Sign Language Research (2021). He has participated in numerous international conferences and workshops. He has been co-editor of the journal Sign Language & Linguistics (2007-2020). He has also been vicechair of the Sign Language Linguistics Society (2004 - 2013), and chair of the European network COST Action IS1006 for the development of reference grammars of sign languages (2011 - 2015). He has coordinated the Horizon2020 project (2016 - 2020): SIGN-HUB (693349) “The Sign Hub: preserving, researching and fostering the linguistic, historical and cultural heritage of European Deaf signing communities with an integral resource”. He is member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans for LSC since 2006, where he leads the LSC corpus and lexical database projects. Member of the Social Council for Catalan Sign Language (Generalitat de Catalunya), as expert in the field of Sign Linguistics, since 2013. Member of the Research Board of Pompeu Fabra University from 2013 till 2023.