Thomas Irish is happy to answer your question, “What are those things on your ears?”
He’ll tell you they’re the external microphone and speech processors for his cochlear implants, the electronic devices in his inner ear that provide a sense of sound. While they don’t work the same as biological hearing, they allow him to experience and engage with the sounds around him.
Irish is deaf, but he’ll tell you he doesn’t feel disabled in every case.
Irish is a third-year PhD candidate in Western’s School of Kinesiology. He’s studying at Western to benefit from the expertise of his supervisor, professor David Howe, a Paralympian-turned-academic who explores how sport can empower marginalized populations.
Irish was born with partial hearing that suddenly diminished in early childhood due to Pendred Syndrome. At age 14, he decided to get cochlear implants.
Experiencing sound with cochlear implants
“I understand being seen as disabled because of my implants,” Irish said, “But that’s an ableist perspective. It says, ‘How do we eradicate deaf people? We need to make them hear with cochlear implants so they can fit into the hearing world,’ but not every deaf person feels they need to be part of that.”
Irish was concerned his decision might distance him from the Deaf community, but he viewed cochlear implants as an additional means for inclusion and connection in the hearing world.
“My decision was about taking control of my body and my life. I wanted the ability to communicate with hearing people and to experience sound on my own terms. I was thinking about my life beyond school.”
Irish grew up in the U.K., where he attended Mary Hare School, a boarding school for deaf students. As the only deaf person in his family, his secondary school education proved to be a transformative entry into the Deaf community, where he thrived among peers he came to view as extended family.
“I’m forever grateful for that school,” Irish said. “That’s where I realized most of us do not identify as disabled. We do everything we need to, just not with hearing.”
While some deaf people view deafness as a disability, others see it as a cultural and language identity. Many deaf people also reject language they view as discrediting.
“We don’t use the phrase ‘hearing impaired’ in Deaf culture because it’s been used to frame deaf individuals as having a ‘deficit’ rather than a natural way of being.” – Thomas Irish, PhD candidate
Irish knew how to speak before attending Mary Hare. The school taught him sign language to connect with the Deaf community and help him explore his Deaf identity, even though the school focuses on oral communication to prepare deaf students for the outside world.
His education there wasn’t his only route to engaging a wider community.
Deaf advocacy in sport
“Sport saved my life,” Irish said. “It provides a different way of understanding the world and interacting with people. Playing basketball allowed me to make connections outside of sport that led to where I am today.”
Deaf sport advocate Thomas Irish played basketball in the 2024 Canada Deaf Games in Toronto, a friendly competition where he enjoyed meeting players from many different backgrounds and cultures within the Deaf community. (Submitted)
But the path through sport was not without obstacles. It began in childhood, when Irish’s brother took him to a basketball club every Saturday.
“I didn’t understand what the others were saying and I would never get the ball. I felt left out. But in time, I got good at basketball, so they let me play. With athletic skill, the language of the game comes naturally, rather than having to communicate verbally with others.”
While those games sparked his passion for sports, other attempts to play left him feeling alienated by coaches and players who didn’t understand the specific needs of a deaf player.
The experience inspired Irish’s current research into the sociocultural experiences of deaf athletes. He’s studying the ways race and disability intersect to shape access, opportunities and perceptions in sports.
“I might experience some things because I’m Black. But then, being an academic and being a deaf person who speaks gives me a privilege in certain situations that can remove discrimination I might face as a Black guy.”
Limited options for deaf athletes
Irish is one of the few researchers focusing on athletes who have little visibility outside of Deaf communities.
“We’ve heard of the Olympics, we’ve heard of the Paralympics, but many have never heard of the Deaflympics,” he said.
The Deaflympics, established in 1924, is one of the world’s longest-running multi-sport events after the Olympics. The International Committee of Sports for the Deaf organizes the games, which are sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee. Irish hopes to be part of the 2025 Deaflympics in Tokyo, joining 6,000 athletes and staff.
The Canada Deaf Games, a friendly competition that brings together athletes from across the country, have been held five times since 2012. Irish competed as a basketball player in the 2024 games, where he again experienced the bonds that form between athletes from different cultures.
“That was the first time I was truly exposed to the Canadian Deaf community, and I was struck by the cultural shift between British and Canadian Deaf communities. I knew very little American Sign Language at the time, and I thought, ‘oh, wow, it’s very different from British Sign Language.’ We still found a way to communicate.”
Irish pointed out that deaf people invented the sports huddle in 1894 to block the other team from seeing them sign their next play. Deaf athletes adapt the way they typically sign outside of the huddle to play competitively.
Though there are few opportunities to play deaf sports, Irish doesn’t view hearing sports as a suitable alternative, with so little awareness in organized sports of how to integrate deaf athletes.
“I’m reluctant to try hearing sports because I don’t want to feel the alienation I’ve always been feeling.”
Deaf advocacy builds communities
During his undergraduate studies in the U.K., Irish came very close to leaving school because he felt isolated. But then, a pivotal intervention from Katrina McDonald, a senior lecturer in sport coaching at Anglia Ruskin University, changed his life.
“Katrina prevented me from dropping out,” Irish said. “She opened the door for me to pursue my dissertation ideas when I was still an undergrad. She introduced me to the world of academia, helping me see my potential as a researcher and scholar.”
McDonald included Irish in her qualitative research, a method that uses non-numerical data such as interviews and observations to understand how people make sense of their experiences.
Irish credits McDonald for providing a platform for his personal accounts of navigating life and sports as a deaf athlete. He co-authored the paper Sport saved my life but I’m tired of being an alien, interweaving his poignant experiences with academic exploration of a rarely studied topic.
Another professor, Francesca Cavallerio, provided ongoing support, helping him turn his dissertation into a research paper. In 2018, Cavallerio and McDonald invited Irish to join them in presenting a paper at a conference in Vancouver, where he met Western kinesiology professor David Howe.
Western health sciences professor David Howe
The two met again at a virtual conference in 2021. That was the catalyst for Irish to leave his home and pursue a doctoral degree in Canada under Howe’s supervision.
“He’s the type of supervisor who sees you as a person first,” Irish said. “He directs you to research you’re passionate about and gives you your own space and control. His expertise has opened up aspects of my research I never thought about before.”
Allies like McDonald, Cavallerio and Howe – who took time to truly hear his perspective – are building a better community, Irish said.
“A lot of deaf people drop out of university because of a lack of accessibility and feelings of isolation, but advocates along the way gave me the encouragement to change my whole life. Now I want to help improve the lives of deaf people in sport, academia and beyond, by continuing to put myself out there and build a better community.”
