Manako Yabe is a research associate in the Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Heriot-Watt University, UK. She was born deaf and grew up in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Deaf Studies from California State University, Northridge, a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Southern California, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Disability Studies from the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA. She was the first deaf faculty member in the Department of Disability Sciences at University of Tsukuba, Japan.  

Her research interests include communication access, deaf studies, disability studies, editing and publishing, public speaking, mixed methods study design, and transformative action research.