Erin Moriarty Harrelson

Dr. Erin Moriarty Harrelson is an Assistant Professor  and the Program Director for Deaf Studies at Gallaudet University. Before coming to Gallaudet, she was based in Edinburgh, Scotland as a research fellow with a transnational project called “Deaf mobilities across international borders: Visualising intersectionality and translanguaging”, funded by the European Research Council (2017-2022) (mobiledeaf.org.uk), led by Dr. Annelies Kusters. 

Dr. Moriarty Harrelson’s current work is situated at the intersection of anthropology, visual methods, and applied linguistics. She is focused on the study of multilingual multimodal languaging practices, language ideologies, deaf spaces and ethnographic research methods. She has conducted ethnographic research in Southeast Asia since 2009 and her current research project focuses on deaf tourist mobilities and translanguaging in Indonesia.

Moriarty Harrelson obtained her PhD in Anthropology from American University in Washington, DC. She holds a MA in Communications from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD and a BA in Anthropology and Art History from Smith College in Northampton, MA. In 2014, Moriarty Harrelson was one of six people selected as a member of the first cohort of the Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship and conducted ethnographic research in Cambodia.