Octavian Robinson (he/him) 

Octavian Robinson is associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University and Director of the Center for American Sign Language and Deaf Equity. He earned his Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University with fields in women’s, gender, and sexuality, African-American, and modern U.S. 

Trained as a historian, his interdisciplinary work is situated in disability studies and explores a wide range of topics from linguistic exclusion in the historical archives to explorations of deaf onto-epistemologies through queer theory. His work highlights respectability politics, linguistic protectionism, and lateral ableism in deaf community spaces in the United States. 

He is co-author of the original crip linguistics manifesto with Jon Henner. He identifies as deafdisabled; he is a proud graduate of the California School for the Deaf Riverside and Gallaudet University (B.A. 2002, M.A. 2004).

Kristin N. Wickham-Saxon (she/her) 

Kristin Wickham-Saxon is Assistant Professor of Professional Practice and Director of Undergraduate Studies in The Ohio State University ASL Program and serves as Assistant Director of the Center for American Sign Language and Deaf Equity. Kristin’s introduction to sign language began with a desire to communicate with her Deaf cousin. 

After earning her master’s in Deaf Education from OSU, she enjoyed a decade-long career teaching deaf and hard of hearing high school students in central Ohio prior to teaching ASL at both the high school and college-level. Her teaching centers on innovative pedagogy, distance education, and mentoring. 

She currently serves the ASL Instructors Network as the ASL Teaching Proficiency Coordinator and holds Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf National Interpreter Certification, with experience in community and video relay interpreting.