Cristina Gil is an Adjunct Professor (Professora Adjunta) at Escola Superior de Educação – Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal (ESE-IPS), co-coordinator of the  Portuguese Sign Language Interpreter Training Program (TILGP) and co-founder of the Deaf Studies Lab (CECC). She obtained a PhD in Culture Studies (Faculty of Human Sciences - UCP, 2020) with transdisciplinary research in Culture Studies, Utopian Studies, and Deaf Studies. She coined the neologism Deaftopia to refer to utopian representations and discourses in Deaf communities and Sign Language Peoples worldwide. This research was conducted with a full scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, 2016-2020). During her PhD, she was a visiting scholar at Gallaudet University in Washington (USA). She also holds an Advanced Studies Diploma in Languages, Literature and Cultures, specializing in Cultural Studies (School of Social Sciences and Humanities - NOVA FCSH, 2014), a Master’s in Deaf Communities, Education and Signed Languages (Universidad de Barcelona, 2010), and a Bachelor’s in Portuguese Sign Language Interpretation (ESE-IPS, 2007). During her studies, she also participated in the Erasmus Program at Högskolan Väst in Trollhättan, Sweden. In 2013, In 2013, she was recognized by the University of Minho as a certified instructor for Deaf Education and Special Needs Education. Cristina Gil’s research interests lie in the field of human diversity, particularly in the disciplinary boundaries between Deaf Studies, Deaf History, Deaf Cultures, Deaf epistemologies and ontologies, and Signed Language Interpretation and Translation Studies. Her most recent work includes a chapter on Deaftopias in Utopian Possibilities: Models, Theories, Critiques (2023) and a chapter on Deaftopias in The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literature (2022).

Email at [email protected]  or [email protected]