Roland Metz

For 19 years, I have been working full-time as a construction draftsman in building construction, being employed by the ‘Landesbetrieb Liegenschafts- und Baubetreuung Rheinland-Pfalz’ in Mainz. In 2007, I completed a training for linguistically qualified teachers for German Sign Language at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt. I have been working part-time as a sign language teacher with a modern and deafpride-oriented association in Mainz ever since. I founded the registered association ‘SignTimes’ in 2007. ‘SignTimes’ offers various intensive sign language courses both for beginners and advanced learners, using concepts designed by deaf teachers, sign language linguists and other associates. Furthermore, I learned American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign sign language and specialized in American and German Deaf culture. I am additionally holding lectureships at the RheinMain College, Wiesbaden and at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen. For current and future experimental sign language research, I work closely with the sign language research group in Göttingen. Moreover, I am a counselor in the ‘Landesverband Gehörlosen Rheinland-Pfalz für Gebärdensprache und Gehörlosenkultur’ (State Association of the Deaf Rheinland-Pfalz for Sign Language and Deaf Culture).

I am one of the competent Deaf signers belonging to the deafpride-oriented cultural community. We foster our native signed language and culture and jointly fight audism. A tolerant, respectful and warm-hearted society which allows individual integration and a communicative exchange between the hearing and the Deaf are my personal goals for the future.