ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at the complexity of securing funding and subsequently negotiating multidisciplinary research projects with a specific population: deaf communities of sign language users. They present a case study of one particular action research project funded by the European Commission – the Justi-signs project – and report the key challenges faced with respect to various aspects of the action research process. The term deaf studies has subsequently become synonymous with “sociological, anthropological and ethnographic explorations of deaf lives” and the authors' work falls within this scope, including work they report, concerned with European deaf people’s access to justice as part of the European Commission funded project, Justi-signs. Since the project began, they have encountered several challenges to be negotiated throughout the project, which the authors presented in this chapter. These challenges can also be mapped to the linear, intersectional, hierarchical, and horizontal relationships that hold between researchers, interpreting communities, and other stakeholders key to the research process.
