Esa Penttilä ([email protected])
Research areas include non-professional translation, research translation and translatoriality, figurative language and metaphors, idioms and idiomaticity, cognitive linguistics and translation studies, multilingual communication.
Evgenia Amey ([email protected])
My research focuses on contemporary culture, media, language, place and society; topics I have studied include literary and media tourism, narrativisation of space, digitalisation, media consumption, spatial engagement with fiction, environmental storytelling, fan cultures and belonging. I work as a postdoctoral researcher in the project ‘Kieliviha/ Språkhat – a multidisciplinary study on hate speech directed at linguistic minorities in Finland, Sweden and Russia’ (Kone Foundation 2024-2026).
Feedback literacy and reflection in upper secondary language teaching
FIN-CLARIAH Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure
Hanna Lappalainen ([email protected])
My expertise include research on variation and change in the spoken Finnish, address practices in Finland as well as language attitudes.
Hanne Lahti ([email protected])
University Instructor in Academic and Professional English, Language Centre, Kuopio Campus. Contact person in issues concerning well-being at work, Kuopio campus. I teach mainly fourth- and fifth-year students in the Faculty of Health Sciences (Medicine, Biomedicine and Dentistry).
Heli Paulasto ([email protected])
My research focuses on spoken English, regional and social variation and change, and language contacts and multilingualism. My PhD thesis dealt with the impact of the Welsh language on English language variation and change in Wales, and I continue to have an intense interest in the Englishes of the Celtic culture regions. I have also carried on studying the grammar of contact-induced varieties of English in other parts of the world using corpus methods. The central position of English as a world language means that its global variation and diversity have become important contents in English language teacher education.
More recently, I have directed my attention to English in Finland and its role as a linguistic resource in our everyday lives in different contexts, such as Eastern Finnish Twitter or multilingual community arts. I have also expanded my interest into multilingual interaction in other fields of life in Finnish society, building interdisciplinary bridges into social sciences and nursing.
Main areas of research and teaching: Language variation and change, Language contact and multilingual interaction, Sociolinguistics, World Englishes and English as a global language, English language teaching, English and multilingualism in the workplace.
Helka Riionheimo ([email protected])
I’m an expert in Finnish language and linguistics. Besides Finnish, my research field includes other Finnic languages, of which Karelian had recently been in special focus. I started my research with topics related to spoken language and language contacts and I have gradually moved towards studying endangered languages and revitalization. My key concept is ‘majority responsibility’: as a speaker of the majority language, Finnish, I feel I also have the obligation to look after the country’s minority languages. My aim is to develop sustainable multilingualism where linguistic diversity is seen as a resource.
Irene Taipale ([email protected])
I hold two Master of Arts degrees (English 2020; Literature 2021) and currently work as a doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. Previously, I have worked as a research assistant and a part-time teacher. At present, I teach the course Introduction to Sociolinguistics, which is part of the advanced studies in English Language and Culture.
My doctoral research is part of the project Weak-Tie Hypothesis in Complex Digital Networks (COMET), funded by the Research Council of Finland. The study investigates linguistic Americanization, with a focus on key linguistic variables associated with Americanization in the idiolects of lingua franca English users and their social media (Twitter/X) networks. Adopting a sociolinguistic perspective, I explore how the characteristics of an individual’s social network affect linguistic variation and change in social media, while also examining regional variation.
In addition to research and teaching, I have in recent years been an assistant of the editorial board for a collected volume published by Cambridge University Press. I have also participated in a working group exploring the use of artificial intelligence in university teaching and conducted a workshop on the topic for the staff at the School of Humanities. Currently, I serve as a board member of the Linguistic Association of Finland. Previously, I also wrote theater reviews for a local newspaper for several years.