Curriculum vitae

I work as a professor of German language in the Department of Languages at the Faculty of Humanities (8/2023-).

In my research, I have moved broadly within the field of language studies. The chronological thread running through my research career can be described as a journey that has taken me from studying linguistic structures, to studying language use, the linguistic features of texts and multilingualism, and finally to studying language users, language environments, language communities and languages in society and its institutions.

Currently, I am interested in the status of the German language in Finland and the related questions: language (education) policy, language ideologies, attitudes, beliefs and perceptions, the multilingualism of individuals, communities, and institutions, as well as language-related cultural memory.

Previously, I have conducted corpus-linguistic and contrastive research and worked at the intersection of translation studies and language studies (non-professional translation, minority language translation, the intersections of translation studies and contact linguistics). My research topics range from linguistic landscapes (urban public spaces, digital spaces, museums, cemeteries) to linguistic accessibility, multilingual practices, text corpora, proper names, grammar (meteorological events, valency/argument structure, grammaticalization), the intersections of morphology, phraseology, and syntax (prefix and particle verbs), as well as linguistic features of translated texts (passive voice, pronouns, subject).

I have taught a wide range of courses in Germanic philology and regularly guest-lectured in my colleagues’ courses in other languages/subjects. I supervise master’s theses and doctoral dissertations related to my research areas in both German and other languages.

From 2025 to 2027, I serve as a member of the Scientific Council for Social Sciences and Humanities at the Research Council of Finland.  I am an elected member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (2017–). Currently, I am leading the national SARAVE project together with Prof. Marjut Johansson (Turku) and Prof. Mika Lähteenmäki (Jyväskylä) (2025‒2028). Funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, the SARAVE project develops the accessibility and quality of university studies in German, French, and Russian in Finland (https://sites.app.jyu.fi/sarave/fi). 

I lead the international FI-DACH research network (2019‒) together with Dr. Sabine Grasz (Oulu), Prof. Pekka Kujamäki (Graz), and Prof. Marko Pantermöller (Greifswald). FI-DACH is a network that studies cultural relations between Finland and the German-speaking area in Europe (https://blogs.helsinki.fi/fi-dach/). I lead the Finnish-German-Dutch Lingdustry research network, which focuses on multilingualism in industrial communities. In the project led by Dr. Hanna Lanto (Turku), “Language Ideologies of Generation Z: Language Making as Textual Performance“ (2023‒2026), I am investigating views, beliefs and attitudes towards different languages in Finland (https://sites.utu.fi/kiera/). 

Previously, I worked as a professor of German language at the University of Turku (2017‒2023). At the University of Eastern Finland, I worked as an associate professor of German language (2013‒2017) and in several other temporary positions (2006‒2013) as a lecturer, university lecturer, senior researcher, post doc researcher and professor/acting of German language. In 2020, I was a part-time and temporary visiting professor at the University of Graz, and in 2010, 2024 and 2025 a visiting researcher at the Saarland University. In 2005, I defended my doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki.