Penny Boyes Braem did her masters at Harvard and PhD degree at Berkeley and has lived in Switzerland since 1974. From 1982-86, she was director of the first sign language interpreter training program in the country (for Swiss French Sign Language in Lausanne/Geneva). In 1982, she founded the private Center for Sign Language Research (Forschungszentrum für Gebärdensprache, FZG) in Basel, through which in the following years she has done studies of several aspects of Swiss German Sign Language and of hearing persons' gestures, often in collaboration with colleagues and institutions from Switzerland as well as from Italy, Germany and England. From 2000 – 2007, Boyes Braem was the founding director of GS-Media (Zurich), a private association, which developed CD-ROMS and books documenting Swiss German Sign Language. Boyes Braem has taught sign language linguistics at several institutions, the most recent one being the University of Basel (signlangcourse.org). In 2012, the FZG became an associate member of the University of Zurich’s Competency Center for Linguistics (ZüKL).

For further information please visit the FZG's homepage.