Trextuality – at the intersection of textual scholarship and translation studies

Trextuality – at the intersection of textual scholarship and translation studies
The XII annual colloquium of Variantti, the Finnish network of researchers working on textual scholarship and scholarly editing, was held on Friday, 4 October 2019, at the University of Turku to foster interdisciplinarity between textual scholarship and translation studies.The theme trextuality encompassed textuality, transmission and translation, concepts central in both fields. In translation studies, trextuality ...

Visiting Poland and gaining international experience 1

Visiting Poland and gaining international experience
This spring has been very memorable, as I have had the pleasure of being a Visiting Professor in Kalisz, Poland. A visiting professor can refer to various kinds of things in the academic world. In this case, I was invited to the Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. ...

A Poetry Researcher’s Field Day

A Poetry Researcher’s Field Day
One might assume that literature research would not necessitate fieldwork, but sometimes it is useful to those of us working with such esoteric topics as contemporary US poetry as well. In early May, I visited the State University of New York at Buffalo, and particularly their library’s Poetry Collection, in search of more materials for ...

Eating elephants 1

Eating elephants
Nearly 1.5 years into my doctoral studies, I have already encountered some sort of block. Things are just not progressing the way I would like, something is not working. I feel like I have read every possible piece of available research about my topic but starting the first article seems like a horrendous endeavor. What ...

Hamlet in Turku

Hamlet in Turku
The Department paid a visit to see Hamlet in the Turku City Theatre in March 2019. The production has garnered good reviews both by critics and audiences, and it was great to have an opportunity to see it, especially as the season is, alas, short. SPOILER ALERT – what happens in Hamlet If you like ...

Philologists in Edinburgh

Philologists in Edinburgh
The International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) was organised for the 20th time in Edinburgh on 27–30 August. The conference gathers together English scholars from around the world, studying English from Old to Late Modern. Almost all of our researchers from the Philological Track made it to ICEHL. Matti Peikola, Mari-Liisa Varila, Hanna Salmi ...

Introducing our latest permanent staff member: Q&A with Maarit Koponen

Introducing our latest permanent staff member: Q&A with Maarit Koponen
Maarit Koponen visiting the Kennedy Space Center. 1. Tell us a little bit of who you are. I am a university lecturer of English, researcher of translation technology, a former professional translator, and a fan of both historical dramas and science fiction. I have an MA in English Philology and a PhD in Language Technology, ...

Philological fieldwork in London and Turku

Philological fieldwork in London and Turku
If you trust Wikipedia, fieldwork refers to “the collection of information outside a laboratory, library or workplace setting”. However, philological ‘fieldwork’ often takes place within a library – but instead of reading secondary literature, we examine primary materials. I’m currently a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London. During my stay here, I work ...

Soup with Paul Auster 1

Soup with Paul Auster
There is something surreal about eating the same soup as Paul Auster. All of a sudden, the intangible, enigmatic, almost disembodied author, whose books I read, whose films I watch and whose activities I follow in the media, is scooping mashed potatoes (and soup) on his plate (not the one that had the soup) at ...

My Days as a Conference Assistant 1

The Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE) held its eighth biannual conference here in Turku this summer. Having never attended a conference before, I leapt at the opportunity to work as an assistant at the event and get credits for my Master’s internship. I’m glad I did, for The FINSSE-8 conference, “What’s in ...