Danielle D’Hayer is an Associate Teaching Professor in Interpreting Studies, and Head of Community and Business Engagement at London Metropolitan University. As a professional interpreter, Danielle champions multilingualism and multiculturalism as egalitarian values that enhance communication and shape identity.
She is a native French speaker, with English, Spanish and Italian, continuously inspired by her multilingual family and her interpreting students. As an Ehlers Danlos Syndrome sufferer, she missed 70% of her school education due to lack of teaching flexibility and accessibility. Her initial learning experience made her feel disconnected and isolated. As a system convenor, she cultivates this experience as a tool to promote democratic, inclusive and accessible communities of practice where, in partnership with students, alumni and colleagues across courses and countries, she facilitates the co-creation of new knowledge that leads to life-changing experiences.
Danielle is one of the leading academics in the world of conference and public service interpreting. She is internationally renowned for her unique approach to hybrid experiential learning pedagogy, empowered by her inclusive egalitarian community of practice model, where students who ‘learn within a community by caring, giving and sharing’ benefit from a dialogic experience online/onsite, regardless of their language combination. She has pushed the boundaries of hybrid technology to design the best tailor-made professional interpreting suite, used as a model by technical companies and interpreting course directors globally since 2019.
For the last 12 years, she has championed hybrid experiential pedagogy to offer flexible access to teaching and learning by removing the barriers of logistics, distance, missing work, cost, caring for children, and the emotional/physical fatigue in the students' complex lives. The Covid pandemic was a catalyst to promote her leadership in the field of hybrid pedagogy, but also in the interpreting profession. Her sustainable model based on trust signals a paradigm shift that is transforming the interpreting elitist top-down skills-based approach into a more horizontal collaborative professional landscape.