Marah Jaraisy

• 2016 BA in English Language and Literature and Human Services (Double Major), Haifa University, Israel
• 2021 MA in Applied Linguistics, Bar Ilan University, Israel

I'm an M4C-AHRC PhD. student and a member of the SignMorph research team led by Prof. Adam Schembri. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in 2016 from the University of Haifa in English Language and Literature and Human Services as a second major. I became more and more interested in signed languages and deaf communities from a sociolinguistic perspective. In 2021 I finished my Master's in Bar-Ilan University with distinction. My Master's thesis investigated intra- and inter-modal language contact in the deaf community of Kufr Qassem. For my PhD., I will continue to work on Kufr Qassem Sign Language and the deaf community of Kufr Qassem and focus on the relationship between morphology, social structure, and language ideologies.

My work focuses on a small Palestinian-Arab deaf community of Kufr Qassem in what is now known as Israel. My Ph.D. will investigate the effect of social structure in the town of Kufr Qassem, as well as the language ideologies among the deaf and hearing community on the emergence and development of verb agreement as a complex morphological structure.