Department
Interpretation

Office Location
Kellogg Conference Hotel (KCH)  3309

Email Address
risa.shaw@gallaudet.edu

Risa Shaw is Assistant Professor at Gallaudet University in the Department of Interpretation. she came to Gallaudet as a full time faculty member in 2001, and subsequently co-authored the BA curriculum and the revised MA curriculum in Interpretation at Gallaudet University. She also co-authored a curriculum on interpreting in legal settings that continues to be used throughout the US, including a fundamentals course and several specific focus courses (Deaf/hearing teams working in legal settings; preparation in legal settings; role and ethics; the monitor role and monitoring interpretations; jury interpreting; law enforcement interpreting; and mock depositions and trials).

Dr. Shaw also has extensive expertise as an interpreter and interpreter educator in the areas of team interpreting, analysis of interpretations, preparation, consecutive interpretion, and Deaf/hearing teams. Dr. Shaw is actively involved in presenting trainings and workshops across the country and serves as a consultant and expert witness for attorneys, Deaf people, and interpreters around the country. She continues her intepreting practice, which she has based in the Washington, D.C. area since 1981.

Dr. Shaw is engaged in research on interpreting in legal settings and on making meaning in context and trauma.  Her dissertation examined the nature of how contextual factors influenced discourse usage and narrative structure in ASL and English in trauma stories across two contexts: conversation and interviews. Her findings underscore the centrality of context in meaning making.

• PhD Dissertation - Meaning in Context: The Role of Context and Language in Narratives of Disclosure of Sibling Sexual Assault