Mette Sommer Lindsay

Dr Mette Sommer Lindsay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University and Cluster Lead of SIGNS@HWU, a research group of deaf and hearing researchers working in sign language studies and Deaf Studies. She is a sociologist whose research focuses on deaf people’s working lives, including deaf entrepreneurship, deaf people in the labour market, and the use of technology in self-employment.

Mette has strong ties to the deaf communities and to practice. She spent seven years as an Advocacy Advisor at the Danish Deaf Association, and later coordinated and carried out research projects for the association on deaf interpreting, mental health care and older deaf people’s care homes. She has also worked for the Danish National Centre for Social Research and the Finnish Deaf Association as researcher. She served as an appointed member of the Appeals Board of the Danish Ministry of Employment (2012–2017).

She holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Heriot-Watt University, awarded in 2021, with a focus on deaf people’s coping strategies in business ownership contexts, and an MSc in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen. She has been an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) since 2017 and is currently completing a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning at Heriot-Watt University (2024–2027). She is a member of the University and College Union (UCU), the Danish Sociological Association and DJØF (the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists).