Category Archives: Research

International collaboration facilitates research on interactional fluency

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L2 interactional fluency across contexts (ILFACT) is a research project focused on second language (L2) fluency in interactive settings. The project is conducted by members of the FlowLang research group and is funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024–2028). The project aims to provide information about interactional fluency and the factors that affect it, which can help to develop methods for assessing fluency in interactional contexts.

Data collection visit to Germany

Data collection for this project started in Finland earlier this year and continued in May with a visit to Marburg, Germany, where we collected the other half of the data for this project. The data were collected on three consecutive days by the PI Pauliina Peltonen, project researcher Saara Naapila, and a local doctoral researcher, Carmen Kraft, at Philipps University Marburg. The data collection was a success, thanks to our collaborators who hosted us and assisted us in collecting the data. The help of the project’s German collaborator, Professor Sandra Götz, in particular, was invaluable in making the data collection possible. We are also grateful to the local students and their teachers, Victoria Gath and Aoife Holmes-Rein, who volunteered their time to contribute to this project.

ILFACT team members professor Sandra Götz, Saara Naapila, and Pauliina Peltonen standing in front of bookshelves
The data collection in Marburg was made possible with the help of our collaborator, Professor Sandra Götz (on the left).

Support from the Research Council of Finland allowed Pauliina Peltonen to stay in Germany for four weeks not only to oversee and complete the data collection, but also to visit another project collaborator, Dr. Loulou Kosmala, and to give a guest lecture on social approaches to language learning at Philipps University Marburg.

Pauliina Peltonen giving a lecture in a classroom in front of a blackboard and a projected screen depicting the map of the Baltic countries and the main building of the University of Turku
Pauliina Peltonen giving the guest lecture at Philipps University Marburg.

Researching interactional fluency

The data for the ILFACT project consists of interactional speech samples collected from advanced learners of English in Finland and Germany. The students complete two tasks in pairs in their first language (L1) and in their L2, English. One of the tasks is a problem-solving task where the goal is to reach an agreement on the order of importance of certain items and to solve a problem through discussion. The other task is a topic-based discussion, where the students can freely discuss a topic that they are given.

These interactions are audio and video recorded, and the data are analyzed with a multimodal mixed-methods approach. Due to the multimodal nature of the data, the impact of visual cues on interactional fluency, such as facial expressions and gestures, can be analyzed in addition to more traditional spoken features of (dis)fluency, such as pauses.

The focus on interactional fluency in the project provides a new perspective to L2 fluency research. Fluency is an important part of L2 proficiency, and fluency research has often focused on individuals’ fluency from the perspectives of learning, teaching, and assessment. However, there is little research on interactional fluency, even though everyday language use is often interactive in nature.

Going forward

The project will continue with analysis of the data that has been collected. In a later stage of the project, the data will also be used to analyze perceived fluency with the help of fluency assessments, also collected from advanced learners of English. This part of the project aims to increase understanding of the factors that influence the assessment of interactional fluency, especially with respect to the speaker’s personal speaking style and multimodality.

Overall, the project contributes to research on L2 fluency, the assessment of language skills, and L2 teaching. The results of the project can, therefore, be used to support the development of L2 teaching methods. The project also produces important information on the assessment of language skills, which can be used to develop more reliable and equitable assessment practices.

Text by Saara Naapila and Pauliina Peltonen

Photos by Sandra Götz

Visualising knowledge: reflections from the Reading Visual Devices conference

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On 22 May, the foyer of Arcanum buzzed with anticipation as attendees gathered for the Reading Visual Devices conference organized by the Early Modern Graphic Literacies (EModGraL) project. The event began with a warm welcome from Marjo Kaartinen, Rector of the University of Turku and a member of the EModGraL project. Rector Kaartinen highlighted the city’s rich late medieval and early modern heritage, noting that there could hardly be a more fitting location for a conference focused on early modern graphic devices. She concluded her opening remarks by expressing the university’s pride in the project.

Attendees enjoying coffee and conversations between sessions in the lobby of Arcanum

Next to take the stage was Professor Matti Peikola, the principal investigator of the EModGraL project. He extended thanks to the project’s primary funders – the Research Council of Finland and the City of Turku. As the four-year project draws to a close this summer, the conference marked a significant milestone in its final phase. In attendance were two of the project’s key collaborators: Professor Wendy Scase (University of Birmingham) and Dr Carla Suhr (University of Helsinki), both of whom gave keynote speeches. A third keynote was presented by Professor Andrew Riggsby (University of Texas).

The multidisciplinary conference brought together researchers interested in late medieval and early modern visual devices such as images, diagrams, charts, and tables that convey information alongside text. Over the course of three days, the programme featured three keynote lectures and 25 paper presentations, covering topics ranging from diagrams in early modern grammar textbooks to witchcraft pamphlets and medical manuscripts. Together, the papers offered insight into how graphic devices were used, understood, and employed to visualise knowledge in the late medieval and early modern periods.

Professor Matti Peikola presenting findings from the EModGraL project

The international conference drew approximately 40 attendees from a range of academic disciplines. As a student assistant, it was inspiring to observe professionals in action – presenting their findings and exchanging ideas. For me personally, the most rewarding aspect was witnessing the academic community that the project has built over the years.

Finally, on behalf of all the student assistants, I would like to thank Dr Sirkku Ruokkeinen, whose support and guidance helped ensure the smooth organisation of the event. Reading Visual Devices was a successful three-day conference, hosted by what Rector Kaartinen described as a “particularly fabulous project.” As heard in the discussion following Dr Mari-Liisa Varila’s paper on the first conference day, one cannot help but wonder: what’s next? Perhaps, a well-earned holiday for the EModGraL team.

Text by Maria Tervakangas

Photos by Pinja Miettinen

Making sense of historical multiliteracy

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On 26 March, the Department of English celebrated over coffee and cake the latest publication of the Early Modern Graphic Literacies (EModGraL) research project: an edited peer-reviewed volume entitled Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English. The 350-page book is published by the Belgium-based international academic publisher Brepols and edited by Matti Peikola, Jukka Tyrkkö and Mari-Liisa Varila. The chapter authors come from Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and USA. They include Aino Liira, Matti Peikola, Janne Skaffari, Hanna Salmi and Mari-Liisa Varila from the Department of English at the University of Turku.  

Editors Mari-Liisa Varila and Matti Peikola celebrated the publication of their new book, ‘Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English’, over coffee and cake.

Work towards the book started already in 2021 with the workshop ‘Graphic literacy in the history of English’ that we organised in the 21st International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) in Leiden – or, more precisely, in a virtual conference space provided by the University of Leiden during the COVID-19 restrictions. At the time of the conference, EModGraL had not yet started, but we had already received the great news about our four-year funding from the Research Council of Finland. This allowed us to plan the book thematically as a project publication from the start. 

A potential reader who comes across the book in the Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy series (vol. 61) might think that it focuses on the Middle Ages. The chronological range of the contributions, however, spans from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. In addition to Middle English, also Early and Late Modern English materials are discussed in the volume with regard to their graphic practices and literacies. It was important for us to find a publishing series that would allow us to foreground themes that run across the chapters without requiring us to confine ourselves to a specific historical period or a specific medium like manuscript or print. We are grateful to Professor Marco Mostert for providing us with a place in his renowned Utrecht series. 

Like the whole EModGraL project, also the new book starts from the premise that graphic features of communication (such as tables or diagrams) require literacy skills and competencies that differ from the reading of ‘monomodal’ verbal text. In the context of the project and the book, we are particularly interested in finding out how and for what purposes graphic features of communication were historically used in texts targeted at English-language readers. We also want to see how readers were instructed in these graphic practices and in the acquisition of the literacy skills they entail. In addition to finding out more about the history of multimodal communication in English, our research also targets the early history of data visualisation in a vernacular context. At the same time, we also learn more about how various graphic practices were instrumental in the transmission of information and the construction of knowledge in late medieval and early modern English books. 

The new volume may be placed under the broad umbrella of historical pragmatics, a developing and expanding multidisciplinary field. The book has two main parts plus an introductory chapter by the editors and an afterword by Professor Emeritus Jeremy J. Smith (University of Glasgow). Part I (five chapters) addresses graphic features of text that in various ways contribute to the construction of meaning and the organisation of information on the page, such as layout, colour, punctuation and abbreviations. Part II (six chapters) focuses on the use of specific graphic devices like tables, diagrams and representative images. Overall, the chapters examine an impressive range of primary sources of different domains: medical texts, history writing, instructive and didactic texts, administrative accounts and letter-writing.  

Those interested in the topic area of this book are warmly welcome to attend the Reading Visual Devices in Early Books conference organised by the EModGraL project on 22–24 May 2025 in Turku. For further information about the programme and registration, please see https://blogit.utu.fi/emodgral/events/. 

Text by Matti Peikola 

Photo by Teppo Jakonen 

TiTaRa: Between Science and Magic Symposium Through the Eyes of an Assistant

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The TiTaRa: Between Science and Magic Symposium was a great success! The symposium was held on 10–11 October here in Turku together with the Finnish Network of Magic Studies to explore topics such as Western esotericism, magic, witchcraft and early sciences bordering them (such as alchemy and astrology). Participants arrived from around the world, and the topics varied from medieval England all the way to Finland in the 19th century and everything in between.

There were three of us assistants, and in addition to assisting at the symposium, there was a variety of things to do both before and after the event: checking the symposium’s emails, designing and setting up signposts and nameplates, compiling a book of abstracts of all the presentations and making social media posts… Some of these sounded a little intimidating at first for someone with no prior experience on such things but it turned out to not be too difficult after all because we had such a great team. Help was always available, and it was easy to divide some of the work between the three of us. During the symposium, our main responsibilities were working at the reception and assisting with the technology (thankfully no issues arose with the computer!).

The signpost guiding our guests in

Day 1 of the symposium started bright and early on a rainy October morning for us assistants and other organizers of the event. The first things to do were putting up signs outside so that all of our guests could find their way in and making sure the presentations of the day were set up and ready to go. Attendees started arriving a bit before 9 a.m., and our job was to welcome everyone at the reception and hand out nameplates. At 9:15 it was time to officially start the symposium! The first presentation was one of our two keynote speakers, Professor Egil Asprem from Stockholm University. The presentation was about Romani magic and the sexism & racism involved in it with most fortune tellers at the time being women, as well as the stereotypes surrounding it being fraud.

After the first presentation, we had a quick coffee break and then continued with two more presentations before lunch. As assistants, we divided the work so that one or two of us stayed at the reception and the other(s) helped with setting up the presentations (and had the perk of listening to them!). Hearing many of the presentations was honestly one of the best parts about being an assistant at a symposium with such an interesting theme! After lunch, there were three more presentations, and then it was time for coffee once more, followed later in the evening by a City of Turku reception and a dinner at Brewery Restaurant Koulu. After the coffee, we made sure everything was in order for the second day. The first day went by very quickly and left me more excited.

Day 2 started quite similarly for us as the first day. Friday’s first presentation was another one of our keynote speakers, Carla Suhr from the University of Helsinki, whose topic was witchcraft and medicine in early modern English witchcraft pamphlets. The presentation focused on the visual features of the pamphlets, advertisements of proprietary medicines and how they were presented to the audience.  The second day passed by just as quickly as the first, with a total of six presentations in addition to Carla Suhr’s presentation. There was so much to learn, and everyone’s presentation added new perspectives to the theme of the symposium; I learned about the role of magic (and science) in astronomy & astrology, dance, dreams & nightmares and so much more! In a flash, the second day was finished too. Everything went even better than I had anticipated; we had no major issues and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

The schedule of day 2

It was a great experience to learn about all that goes into organizing an event like this, and it felt inspiring to see how passionate everyone seemed to be about their own presentations, and all the discussion each presentation sparked among the attendees. During coffee breaks, it was nice to hear bits and pieces of conversations the attendees were having, often inspired by the previous presentations. I would recommend an assistant internship like this to everyone! It was such an interesting way to meet new people and to learn how academic events are organized. The topics were interesting, everyone was extremely kind, and it hardly felt like work at all. A big thank you to everyone who was part of the symposium!

Text and photos by Maija Riikonen

Tracing the Complicities of Colonial Violence

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On a warm Saturday morning, on 24 August 2024, a small audience gathered to celebrate Amin Beiranvand as he defended his doctoral dissertation Gendered Sexual Violence and Complicity: A Postcolonial Study of Selected Works by J. M. Coetzee. Professor Joel Kuortti acted as custos and adjunct professor John Stotesbury from the University of Eastern Finland as the opponent.

The viva began with Amin’s lectio praecursoria, in which he outlined the historical and cultural context and the main research questions of his dissertation. He ambitiously investigates the fiction of the critically acclaimed Noble Prize winning Coetzee, whose fiction has dealt with, among other themes, the legacy of colonialism and its violent power relations in human and animal encounters. This underlies also Amin’s research, in which he focuses on Coetzee’s portrayals of gender-based violence against racially and ethnically marginalised women in three novels, Dusklands (1974), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) and Disgrace (1999).

All’s well that ends well. The opponent accepts the PhD dissertation.

The opponent presented his questions and criticisms in an approachable and captivating way. The questions began with a lengthy discussion on the dissertation title and specifically the many implications of the word complicity. The effects of colonial violence and its legacy are more far-reaching than those confined into the pages of Coetzee’s novels. This inspired the opponent to ask about Amin’s choice of the term “gender-based” when discussing violence in a setting where it springs as much from the colonial power structures and the racial hierarchies portrayed in the fiction.

The rest of the viva dealt with each novel individually and focused specifically on themes of violence, imagination, history, anger and the effects of silences that deny the voice of the oppressed. On this point, the opponent created an immersive experience for everyone in the room by staying silent for a disturbingly long time. Overall, the atmosphere of the viva was relaxed and the opponent told many entertaining anecdotes from his own career, for example being invited to dinner at Coetzee’s house and the introverted author then failing to show up.

The successful viva resulted in an accepted doctoral dissertation and we congratulate the new Doctor of Philosophy, Amin Beiranvand.

Text by Ira Hansen & Suvi Seppälä

Photo by Damon Tringham

Doctoral researcher exploring the FINSSE-11 conference: What is the role of non-human animals when it comes to sustainability in English studies?

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FINSSE, the Finnish Society for the Study of English, was founded in 1998 “to advance university-level research and teaching in Finland of the English language, literatures in English and cultures of English-speaking peoples”. Biennially, a FINSSE conference is organised “to bring together university teachers, scholars and advanced students from all fields of English studies.” This year’s conference was held in Helsinki 13‒14 June, with the theme “Sustainability in English Studies”.

When I read the Call for Papers in February, I was very happy to see that the theme of this year’s conference would be sustainability. The CFP started by defining sustainability as comprising environmental, social and economic sustainability and asking what it has to do with language and literature. The role of language was seen as a tool through which the viability of communities is sustained and sustainability goals are negotiated, and literature as one through which alternative and more sustainable worlds can be explored. Also, the question of ensuring that research practices in English studies are sustainable was addressed. In addition to the general introduction to the theme, there were topic suggestions related to for example language resources, language policy, ELF, language teaching, translation, equality, identity, health, ecolinguistics, environmental humanities and several approaches to literature.

Besides being excited about the theme in general, I was curious to see how it would be approached in the presentations; which perspectives of sustainability would be discussed, and maybe most importantly, who would be considered being part of the group that the sustaining is done for—humans only, or sentient beings in general. Typically, the current (mainstream) definitions of sustainability exclude sentient beings other than humans as having moral value, but there has been an increasing call for defining sustainability as including non-human animals as ends in themselves. However, there was no mention of them in the CFP, and the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals, which were mentioned briefly in the CFP, are extremely anthropocentric. In the SDGs, non-human animals are treated as either resources for human consumption or, at the species level, as worth conserving in order to keep providing humans with ecosystem services.

In total, the conference program included one plenary presentation, 30 individual presentations, four poster presentations and a panel discussion during the two conference days. In addition, a meeting for doctoral students was arranged the day before the actual conference. I attended 13 presentations and the panel discussion. Using the abstracts as my guide, I aimed to see all those presentations that in one way or the other were connected to sustainability. When there were no such options available, I made my choice based on other reasons, such as my personal interests or the expected relevance to my own research.

I found all the presentations I heard interesting and having scientific, social or practical significance, and the panel discussion on the future of English studies teaching was excellent—both content- and entertainment-wise. Sustainability itself, however, was discussed relatively rarely—and sometimes the term seemed to be used more as a buzzword than in connection with the actual concept—but there were some thought-provoking exceptions. Those presentations were related to the sustainability of language resources; connections between the global environmental crisis and trains in literature and film; researchers’ more sustainable travelling practices; the consequences and possibilities of Caribbean romance literature for environmental and cultural sustainability; and the cost of sustainability in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam. All in all, while there were several interesting connections made to sustainability, the question of non-human animals mentioned above was left to be addressed.

After the conference, I would say that FINSSE-11 was definitely worth attending. The atmosphere was very warm and welcoming, and the program was varied. The next FINSSE conference will be organised in two years, and I warmly encourage everybody working in the field of English studies at any English department in Finland to participate. And if you are not yet a member of FINSSE, or just want to know more about the society, click here!

Anna Runsio

The author is a doctoral researcher at the Department of English, University of Turku. Her doctoral dissertation deals with the linguistic representation of research animals’ agency in historical materials. She is particularly interested in combining linguistics with historical critical animal studies, i.e. using linguistic methods for investigating the exploitation of non-human animals in the past and its consequences today.

A harmony of work and play – Working as a conference assistant in the Trextuality conference

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Serving as a conference assistant and project intern is an excellent decision. Please, let me tell you why!

The info desk of the Trextuality conference, occupied by two conference assistants (taken by the Trextuality social media team)

I attended the Trextuality conference as an assistant and project intern. The conference was aimed at scholars working in translation studies and textual criticism, as well as neighbouring disciplines, such as literary studies and book history. The conference was held 7–9 September 2023 at the University of Turku in the recently renovated Arcanum building and in Educarium. The presenters’ topics were very varied, so you were bound to find something interesting. Personally, I was most interested in seeing how a conference would be organised. In addition, there were several presentation topics that intrigued me. For example, reference module 2B in the image below.

The afternoon schedule of the second day of the conference

Now that you’ve had a glance at just one of the days of the conference, you’ll probably see why I wholeheartedly recommend grabbing the next opportunity to be a conference assistant! Should you not have the time to dedicate to an internship of three or five study points, you get to participate in the lectures held by the attendees for free. If even that somehow fails to entice you to join, let it also be mentioned the food was very good and very free. I will reiterate, there is no need for a commitment to a project internship. You can just be a conference assistant with no strings attached, and these regular assistants were the majority of our numbers. Should you have the time and inclination for an internship, keep reading. If not, keep reading anyway.

So, you want study points for your efforts. You can get a project internship and three study points for your efforts if you put in around 81 hours of work. You get five study points if you put in 135 hours of work, as with regular courses. The 80-hour mark is pretty easy to achieve, whereas the 135-hour mark will require some special arrangements with your supervisor.

There are usually several different ways to help around, be it before, during, or after the conference. I will mostly be talking with this conference in mind, but much of this applies to project internships done as a part of other types of events as well. For instance, before the conference there were signposts to be set up and the lecture rooms had to be rearranged to suit the conference’s needs. Some of us were a part of the photography and social media teams that created content about the conference during the event. I was a part of the shift list team. Our planning made sure every room and the help desk were always occupied by at least one assistant. 

During the conference, the social media team and help desk and lecture room assistant duties offered a chance to pitch in. In addition, simply attending the presentations held by the attendees counted towards the hour threshold. Due to sick calls, I had to go a little light on attending presentations. I spent most of the conference manning the information desk, ready to help conference guests with whatever questions or needs they might have.

After the conference, there is the option of writing about your experiences for publications, which is exactly what I’m doing right now! These publications can be magazines read by linguists or blogs, such as the one you’re reading this text on.

We, the assistants, were called the T-rex team. The working spirit of the T-rex team impressed me. There were quite a few cases of illness that popped up during the conference among the assistants. Despite this, our line held, and we fulfilled our duties.

A group photo of some of the conference assistants (taken by the Trextuality social media team)

Our supervisors, the actual organisers of the conference, were the masterminds behind the whole operation, pulling it off like the true academics they are. Many occasions needed quick solutions and creative problem-solving that only the organisers had the authority to do. Say, helping with luggage forgotten by the attendees. Whenever we, the assistants, were at our wits’ end, asking our supervisors didn’t leave us on the rocks. We, the helping hands, were in good hands ourselves.

What for me personally made the entire conference was how kind and patient the guests were. If they needed help with something, they were polite, and if we had to find something out for our guests, they waited calmly, without rushing us. Their demeanour was professional and pleasant all around. We also received a great deal of kind words from the attendees in the form of emails sent to the organisers after the conference, which I personally found very heart-warming to hear.

To summarise, if interested, the next time you get an email saying that conference organisers are looking for assistants, grab a friend and volunteer. Do it for the study points, the experience, just to help out if nothing else. The worst that can happen is getting free food and a chance to meet fun people. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me.

Text by Ali Lamminen

Unraveling the Complexities of Competence

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Earlier this spring, I had the opportunity to attend an eye-opening event on the “complexities of competence”, namely, Marja-Leena Niitemaa’s doctoral defense on Complexities of Competence: A Study on Finnish Upper-secondary Lexical Development and Use of L2 English. I had no idea what to expect, other than it was a formal event, and, I imagined, a very nerve-racking one, at least for the doctoral candidate.

The viva voce is the ultimate climax of years of hard work, i.e., blood, sweat and tears for many. Finally, the day has arrived when you can present to the public the cornucopia of knowledge you have acquired along your PhD journey. The grace and dignity of the event was humbling.

Marja-Leena’s viva began with an introduction by the Custos, Professor Pekka Lintunen. Senior Lecturer Katja Mäntylä of the University of Jyväskylä was Marja-Leena’s Opponent (thesis examiner). Marja-Leena’s lucid lectio praecursoria captured the audience’s interest from the start because the topic of her dissertation is perhaps something many people can relate to, i.e., acquiring and applying foreign language skills through digital means. The complexities Marja-Leena spoke of refer to the multifarious and interweaving ways in which young people acquire English today. Learning English is no longer limited to the classroom only; rather, students draw upon the resources their environment offers, e.g., internet and television. 

Marja-Leena Niitemaa together with Custos Professor Pekka Lintunen and Opponent Senior Lecturer Katja Mäntylä

The event was indeed a learning experience, having struggled with my own complexities along my PhD journey. For example, how do you navigate around unexpected results, results that controvert decades of previous research? This can really multiply your symptoms of imposter syndrome! How do you get your head around statistics when your brain has not been wired for such things—let alone interpreting them! How do you balance work and tend to your PhD brainchild? How can you tell procrastination to go pound sand? The answers to these questions are, of course, different for everyone. Perseverance and determination certainly help, keeping your eye on your target and thinking back to why you began your PhD journey in the first place also help.

For me, experiencing Marja-Leena’s viva helped me to garner the much-needed faith I needed to invest in myself. I was able to witness first-hand the culmination of hard work, determination and learning processes that go into writing a dissertation. This, if anything, gave me a nudge to keep working towards the goal I set so many years ago. So, if you are contemplating about getting a PhD or struggling to finish one, go to a viva—you’ll get all the inspiration you need!

Text: Judi Rose

Photo: Pauliina Peltonen

Research visit to Philipps University Marburg

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As part of my postdoctoral research period in the Research Council of Finland funded project Fluency and Disfluency Features in L2 Speech (FDF2; 2020–2024, PI Pekka Lintunen), I spent six months as a visiting researcher at Philipps University Marburg in Germany during January–June 2023. The main purpose of this research visit was to facilitate collaboration with a member of the project’s international advisory board, Professor Sandra Götz. 

It’s all about collaboration

My six months in Germany ended up, indeed, facilitating the collaboration with Prof. Götz in various ways. I appreciated the opportunity to discuss various research-related and other matters with her in our weekly meetings. Working in adjacent offices also allowed us to deepen and extend our existing collaboration, notably on a study addressing the speaking style and task mode effects on L2 speech fluency. I am also grateful to Prof. Götz and the Department of English and American Studies for making it possible to invite one of our collaborators, Dr. Loulou Kosmala from Université Paris Nanterre, for a short visit to Marburg. Her visit greatly facilitated the progress of our collaborative work on the links between fluency and gesture, which is based on the interactional data collected in the FDF2 project. Our pilot study has been published as part of the DiSS workshop 2023 proceedings. My research stay in Marburg, therefore, not only facilitated the collaboration with German colleagues, but also brought me closer to my other central European colleagues, including Dr. Kosmala.

Happy hosts (me and Prof. Götz on the left) and our visitor, Dr. Kosmala (on the right)

Getting to know the department

While working at the Department of English and American Studies, I had the privilege to get to know the department’s wonderful staff. I familiarized myself with the research done in the department by participating in their Linguistics colloquium research meetings and got to present our FDF2 project to the group. During lunches and other casual meetings, I learned that one of my colleagues, Aoife Holmes-Rein, hosts a podcast called Grandiose Grammar, including 45 episodes (and counting!) on various aspects of English Grammar.

During my stay in Marburg, I also got to witness the beginning of a great new practice facilitating casual encounters among the department’s students and staff, namely the Language lovers’ lunch club (3LC), launched by Holmes-Rein, Kathrin Kircili and Prof. Götz. The department has an Instagram account (@iaa_marburg) where they post about the lunch meetings and other activities at the department.

In the first 3LC meeting, the topic was language change and lexical innovation. Finnish “sisu” mentioned!

Teaching benefits research

While my visit was focused on research, I was happy to get the chance to give some guest lectures as well. I talked about social approaches to language learning on a course focusing on linguistic theory and the history of linguistic ideas. In addition, I gave fluency-themed talks on two different courses: one focused on spoken English and another focused on English as a foreign language. The participants on the latter course were future teachers of English, so we focused especially on the teaching of speech fluency. Getting to reflect on these topics with various groups of students gave a lot of food for thought also for my own research. I am grateful to all students in Marburg who attended these classes and to Prof. Götz and my dear “roommate” at Marburg, Kathrin Kircili, who kindly gave me the chance to join their courses as a visiting lecturer.

Other activities

A lot of my spare time during the visit was spent exploring my hometown, Marburg, as well as the cities nearby. To make the most of the central European rail network, I travelled both within Germany (for instance to Cologne, Hamburg, and Berlin) and to neighboring countries (France). In addition to these non-work-related trips, I also travelled outside Europe during my stay to participate in the annual conference for the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Portland, Oregon. At the conference, I presented preliminary findings on the effects of L1 speaking style and task mode on L2 fluency and got to meet colleagues especially from outside Europe.

The Old Town of Marburg.

All in all, the six months I spent in Marburg were really enjoyable and rewarding, both from personal and professional perspectives. I learned a lot during my stay. I know that our collaboration will continue at least remotely, but I hope I can return to Marburg for another visit sometime in the future. 

Thank you to Prof. Sandra Götz, the Department of English and American Studies at Philipps University Marburg and the Research Council of Finland for making this visit possible.

Text by Pauliina Peltonen

First photo by Sandra Götz, second and third photos by Pauliina Peltonen

So-Swiss-ticated in Zurich

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Switzerland. The home of cheese, chocolate, the Alps… and a bustling English Department at the University of Zurich with an overwhelmingly well-stocked library that I could have lived in for the entirety of my four-week stay and I still wouldn’t have even scratched the surface, and a staff that welcomed me with open arms?

As it turned out, yes.

After two years of part-time PhD work, the stars finally aligned and as funding was secured, the distant dream of a research visit to the home Department of one of my supervisors came to fruition. I arrived in Zurich in late April and was immediately met with extreme kindness and willingness to help with anything and everything from everyone I met at my host Department.

A view of the Limmat river from Lindenhof, the former site of a Roman fort and, later, Charlemagne’s grandson’s palace.

My weeks were spent with my nose firmly planted in both primary and secondary sources of my dissertation as well as discussing my research with my supervisor and getting to know some of the rest of the staff more closely. I also had a chance to present my research at one of the Department’s Lunch Talks, where the audience enjoys their lunch while listening to presentations.

The rooftops and church towers of Zurich.

The weekends were for exploring. I wandered the streets of the medieval Altstadt (Old Town) and visited its various churches, including the Fraumünster, the founding charter of which is from 853 and on display in the church’s crypt (not going to lie, this was maybe the most exciting single thing I encountered). I explored the National Museum, the Kunsthaus (art museum), and paleontological and archeological museums, as well as the local zoo. Venturing south, I visited the town of Rapperswil to get a better view of the Alps. Fun fact: Rapperswil is home to the longest wooden bridge in Switzerland!

Lake Zürich, the Rapperswil-Hurden wooden bridge, and the Alps in the distance.

Another fun fact: If you decide to cross Lake Zürich via said bridge and take the train back to Zurich from the other side, once the wooden bridge ends after 841 meters, you are actually nowhere near the closest train station and you might find yourself walking for 5 kilometers in 23 degree heat, growing increasingly desperate and losing hope of ever reaching your destination with each step.

Against all odds, I survived to tell the tale.

All in all, I enjoyed my visit immensely. In addition to achieving all of my academic goals, I became a huge fan of Swiss bakery culture and the efficiency of public transport, expanded my knowledge of Swiss chocolate brands, and discovered that melted cheese, mashed potatoes and pickled onions make a delicious combination.

I would like to thank the English Department of the University of Zurich and the Kone Foundation for making this visit possible.

Text and photos by Ida Meerto