Tag: University of Jyväskylä

U Jyväskylä: Intercultural Communication (Finland)

“JobUniversity Teacher in Intercultural Communication, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Deadline: 3 August 2025.

The University Teacher’s position is allocated to the discipline of Intercultural Communication in the Department of Language and Communication Studies. The department provides high quality, research-based academic education in language and communication studies.

The University Teacher will be a part of a team responsible for research and education in the field of Intercultural Communication. The teaching takes place in the international MA degree programme Language, Globalization and Intercultural Communication and the study module in Intercultural Communication. The contents of the teaching modules deal for example with themes related to critical approaches to diversity in organizational communication, dynamics of migration, technology-mediated communication across contexts, issues related to intergroup communication, discourses of power, and both qualitative and quantitative methodology.

University Teachers are required to have a relevant master’s degree. The duties, qualification requirements and language skills of a University Teacher are stipulated by the University of Jyväskylä Regulations and language skills guidelines. Excellent proficiency in English is required in this position.

In addition, the following skills and achievements are regarded as merits: (i) experience in teaching, (ii) pedagogical training, (iii) development of teaching materials, (iv) other merits in teaching, (v) other skills and achievements relevant to the task of the University Teacher, and (vi) collaboration possibilities in teaching within the broader structure of the department. Research (vii) in one of the core research areas of the department or at their crossroads is also considered a merit (see https://www.jyu.fi/en/humsoc/kivi/research-at-kivi).

Negotiating multilingual spaces and policies in an introductory class in Northern Norway (Norway but Hybrid)

EventsRagni Vik Johnsen: Negotiating multilingual spaces and policies in an introductory class in Northern Norway, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 7 October 2024 (Hybrid).

Welcome to a hybrid guest lecture and researcher meeting to discuss the linguistic environments encountered by newly arrived immigrant students in lower secondary education on 7 October 2024 at the University of Jyväskylä’s Ruusupuisto building (Alvar Aallon katu 9). The guest is Assistant Professor Ragni Vik Johnsen from UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, who spends and Erasmus+ visit in Jyväskylä and brings new research insights from the Norwegian context. Please find the abstract and Ragni’s bio in the event site.

Program (slots in EET)

12:15 – 13:45 Guest lecture: Negotiating multilingual spaces and policies in an introductory class in Northern Norway (Ruusupuisto lobby, stairs, or online)

13:45 – 14:15 Coffee break (in person)

14:15 – 15:45 Researcher meeting (Ruusupuisto 3rd floor, E314 Isa, in person)

Semiotic Superdiversity in an Urban Linguistic Landscape: Mozambique (Online)

EventsSarita Monjane Henriksen, Semiotic superdiversity in an urban linguistic landscape: A case study in Mozambique, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, 16 September 2024, 17:00 EEST (Online).

One of the most defining features of African countries has been their multilingual and multicultural nature, with citizens being mostly bilingual or plurilingual and proficient in a variety of languages. However, as a result of increasing mobility and migration, European countries — once perceived as relatively homogenous in linguistic and cultural terms — now also display growing levels of superdiversity. This raises challenges regarding language management in schools and classrooms, and in society at large.

This paper looks at Mozambique, one of the most highly linguistically diverse countries in the world, with its official language Portuguese co-existing alongside various languages of African origin, and other European languages such as English and French, as well as Asian languages. The paper analyses societal and education language policies and practices through an ethnographic semiotic lens. Key foci include people’s perceptions and views on existing languages, official discourses on languages, discussions of language hierarchies, and the role of language in education and development. Further issues of linguistic human rights in education and society are also covered. Altogether this highlights the key insights brought about from a thorough analysis of semiotic superdiversity in an urban landscape in the global south.

This is one of the University of Jyväskylä Online English Seminars for 2024-25. The event will be live-streamed online with interactive Q&A after the talk. All are welcome to attend.

A Linguistic Landscapes Approach to Learning Environments (Finland & Online)

EventsA linguistic landscapes approach to learning environments,  Speaker: Tamás Péter Szabó , University of Jyväskylä, Seminaarinmäki, B 349 Suvanto and Zoom, 7 November 2023 14:15–15:45 EET.

Welcome to think about the origins and use of the concepts linguistic landscape and schoolscape that help us understand discourses, policies and educational practices in public spaces. The workshop is part of the ongoing FORTHEM Campus period hosted by the University of Jyväskylä. Open to students, researchers, teachers and anyone interested, this workshop demonstrates the concepts of linguistic landscapes and schoolscapes through some main conceptualizations of language and language learning in educational contexts. Examples from ethnographic research invite participants to reflect on their own lived experiences and (envisioned) pedagogical practices.

The term linguistic landscape originates in Geography research that first focused on the presence of various languages in commercial signs in the 1970s. Expanding an early focus on written signs in public spaces, current definitions take a multimodal and multisensory approach. The concept of schoolscape in turn encompasses physical, institutional, societal, and virtual spaces of education. Schoolscape studies look beyond policy and language practices and frame language and educational practices as spatialized and embodied.

Tamás Péter Szabó (PhD) is Senior Lecturer of multilingualism and the internationalisation of teacher education in the Department of Teacher Education as well as Adjunct Professor of Linguistic Landscape studies in the Centre for Applied Language Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. In his schoolscape studies, he focuses on multilingual pedagogies and methodological innovations. Further, he develops pre- and in-service teacher education courses for the creative renewal of learning environments. In the FORTHEM Alliance, Tamás is Alliance level coordinator of Multilingualism in School and Higher Education Lab and co-chair of the Labs and Co-creation Mission Board.

This workshop is a joint session of the FORTHEM Campus course Approaches to Multilingualism and the FORTHEM Digital Academy course Multilingual Learning Environments, both developed by contributors of Multilingualism in School and Higher Education Lab.

FORTHEM Alliance aims to transform and shape the future of the European higher education and research area. The nine universities have therefore established an education, research, innovation and transfer connecting, student-centred and inclusive European University with a strong regional anchoring. FORTHEM is an alliance of nine public universities with a well-balanced geographical distribution in Europe. 

Malgorzata Lahti Profile

Profiles

Malgorzata  Lahti,  Ph.D., works  as  Senior  Lecturer  in  Communication  at  the  Department  of Language  and  Communication  Studies,  University  of  Jyväskylä,  Finland.

Malgorzata Lahti

She currently teaches courses on small group and team interaction with a focus on professional settings. She has extensive experience designing and running courses in  intercultural  communication,  and  she has  co-run international  master’s programmes (Intercultural Communication; Language, Globalisation and Intercultural  Communication)  offered  by  the  department.  Lahti is a member of the teaching and research network European Masters in Intercultural Communication (EMICC), and she offers a course on diversity in workplace interactions as part of the annual EMICC exchange program Eurocampus. She is also a member of the board of the Nordic Network for Intercultural Communication.

Lahti’s 2015 doctoral dissertation, Communicating Interculturality in the Workplace, won the Best Dissertation of the Year Award at the University of Jyväskylä. Her research interests  include interculturality  and  multilingualism  in  professional  and  academic  contexts,  critical  approaches  to intercultural communication, as well as face-to-face and technology-mediated team interaction. In her ongoing research projects she is exploring knowledge construction in interactions of a cleaning team. She also applies the perspective of interculturality to the study of interprofessional teamwork in health care.  Together with Mélodine Sommier and Anssi Roiha, Lahti recently co-edited a special issue in the Journal of Praxis in Higher Education and a book with Routledge on the topic of teaching critical interculturality in higher education.

Selected publications:

Lahti, M., & Valo, M. (2017). Intercultural workplace communication. In          M. C. Green & K. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Oxford research encyclopedia of communication. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Lahti, M. (2020). Diversity and social interaction at work. In L. Mikkola & M. Valo (Eds.), Workplace communication (pp. 110-122). New York: Routledge.

Lahti, M., Olbertz-Siitonen, M., & Laitinen, K. (Hosts). (2021, November 23). Communicating interculturality (No. 3) [Audio podcast]. In Vuorotellen. Prologos.fi.

Sommier, M., Lahti, M., & Roiha, A. (Eds.). (2021). From ‘intercultural-washing’ to meaningful intercultural education: Revisiting higher education practice (Special Issue). Journal of Praxis in Higher Education, 3(2).

Shirahata, M., & Lahti, M. (2022). Language ideological landscapes for students in university language policies: Inclusion, exclusion, or hierarchy. Current Issues in Language Planning, 1-21. DOI: 10.1080/14664208.2022.2088165.

Sommier, M., Roiha, A., & Lahti, M. (Eds.). (2023). Interculturality in higher education: Putting critical approaches into practice. London: Routledge.

Work for CID:
Malgorzata Lahti is the co-author of KC107: Interculturality and of a Guest Post on Implementing Critical Approaches to Interculturality in Higher Education.

Mélodine Sommier Profile

ProfilesMélodine Sommier is currently working as an Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She received her Ph.D. in 2016 for work on representations of secularism as part of the French national imaginary in newspaper texts.

Melodine Sommier

Mélodine’s research interests cover a variety of themes related to intercultural communication, media representations, race and racism, migration, sustainability, and education. Within the field of intercultural communication, her work concentrates on the use of culture as a discursive and an interactional resource. She mostly relies on critical and discursive approaches to examine the construction of cultural realities and outcomes regarding the (re)production of difference. Her research project on ‘racial landscapes’ (2022-2027) focuses on the way race and racism materialize in everyday urban spaces across Europe in ways that contribute to (re)produce and contest existing discourses and processes of racialization.

Mélodine is co-founder of the Intercultural Communication & Diversity division at the Netherlands-Flanders Communication Association (NeFCA) which she co-chaired between 2018-2022. She is the chair of the Intercultural and International Communication division at the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA) and a board member of the Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU).

Selected publications:

Fanari, A., Sommier, M., & Rahmani, D. (2025). (Re)defining intercultural communication theorizing: Mapping the current landscape of the field. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 54(5), 287-97.

Sommier, M., Roiha, A., & Lahti, M. (Eds.) (2023). Interculturality in higher education: Putting critical approaches into practice. London: Routledge.

Sommier, M. (2022). Race et espace: La ville comme lieu d’étude des représentations raciales [Race and space: Exploring racial representations in the city]. Itinéraires: Littérature, Textes, Cultures, 2021(3).

Sommier, M., Wang, Y., & Vasques, A. (2022). Transformative, interdisciplinary and intercultural learning for developing HEI students’ sustainability-oriented competences: A case study. Environment, Development and Sustainability.

Sommier, M., Lahti, M., & Roiha, A. (Eds.) (2021). From ‘intercultural-washing’ to meaningful intercultural education: Revisiting higher education practice. (Special issue). Journal of Praxis in Higher Education, 3(2).

Galy-Badenas, F., & Sommier, M. (2021). “A baby bump for women’s rights”: Analysing local and international media coverage of Jacinda Ardern’s pregnancy. Feminist Media Studies.

Sommier, M. (2020). “How ELSE are you supposed to dress up like a Black Guy??”: Negotiating accusations of Blackface in online newspaper comments. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(16), 57–75.

Work for CID:
Mélodine Sommier is the co-author of KC107: Interculturality and of a Guest Post on Implementing Critical Approaches to Interculturality in Higher Education., and the translator of KC107: Interculturality into French.

U Jyväskylä: Intercultural Communication (Finland)

“JobUniversity Teacher in Intercultural Communication, Department of Languages and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. Deadline: 15 April 2021.

The University Teacher will be a part of a team responsible for research and education in the field of Intercultural Communication. The teaching takes place in the international MA degree programme Language, Globalization and Intercultural Communication and the study module in Intercultural Communication. The contents of the teaching modules deal for example with themes related to diversity in organizational communication, migration and transition in a global world, and issues related to intergroup communication in technology-mediated contexts. A successful candidate is expected to have earlier experience and strong teaching merits from the field of Intercultural Communication. An active research profile in the field will also be considered an asset. The primary language of instruction is English. A good command of Finnish is considered an asset.

‘University Teacher’ in the Finnish system is a relatively junior position, focused on teaching but with the potential to progress. It’s a full-time permanent position, often held by people during their PhD or postdoc studies. 

U Jyväskylä Senior Lecturer in Communication (Finland)

“JobSenior Lecturer in Communication, Department of Languages and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. Deadline: 2 October 2020.

There is also a position for Assistant or Associate Professor, with a deadline of November 4, 2020.

The Senior Lecturer’s position is allocated to the Department of Language and Communication Studies to the discipline of Communication. Communication is a popular, academic discipline, focusing on communication behaviour and dynamics of social interaction both in face-to-face and technology-mediated contexts. The key focus area in the discipline is interpersonal and group communication in working life. In teaching and research, interpersonal relationships in organisations, groups, teams and networks, technology-mediated and organisational communication, communication and well-being, persuasion and argumentation, communication competence as well as communication ethics are being examined.

Together with co-workers, the Senior Lecturer is responsible for teaching and research of communication. The Senior Lecturer is expected to conduct high-level teaching and scientific research in areas that support the teaching and research profile of the department. Expertise in interpersonal communication, communication in groups, teams and organisations, communication competence and communication development in organisations, as well as methodological competence in the area of communication is emphasized in the position. The duties of Senior Lecturer also include supervision of theses, planning new research projects and acquiring external research funding.

CFP Ethnography with a Twist (Finland)

ConferencesCall for Papers and Panels: ETHNOGRAPHY WITH A TWIST, 12–14 February 2019, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland. Deadline: 31 August 2018.

Contemporary political, environmental, and social challenges and crises, rapidly changing societies, development of technology, and encountering of people and cultures produce new environments of research and a need to rethink innovative research methods. The ETHNOGRAPHY WITH A TWIST conference will bring together researchers from diverse disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. We welcome papers and panels that explore ethnographic research from a wide range of perspectives that reflect the variety of backgrounds and/or address personal and affective experiences of the researchers. The conference will provide an interdisciplinary arena for lively discussion and exchanges in an inspiring environment that allows ethnographic research to be approached without the weight of tradition and encourages thinking outside the box and the usual comfort zones in our respective fields.

Continue reading “CFP Ethnography with a Twist (Finland)”

U Jyväskylä Job Ad: Intercultural & Digital Communication (Finland)

Associate Professor, Intercultural and Digital Communication, University of Jyväskylä

The University of Jyväskylä is a nationally and internationally significant research university and an expert on education that focuses on human and natural sciences. The University is Finland’s leading expert in teacher education and adult education, as well as the major exporter of education. The Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences is the only one in the country. The University of Jyväskylä is known for its dynamic operating culture and strong commitment to social responsibility.

Department of Language and Communication Studies is currently seeking to recruit an Associate Professor (tenure track), Intercultural and Digital Communication, starting January 1st 2018 for a fixed-term period of five years. The Associate Professor’s position is allocated to Department of Language and Communication Studies in the discipline of Intercultural communication. The position supports the profiling of the department at the two core fields of the University strategy (Languages, Culture and Communities in Global Change Processes, and Information Technology and the Human in the Knowledge Society) and the profiling measure Language in Changing Society.

The duties of the associate professor include active international research and publication activity, initiating and leading research projects, acquiring external research funding, active participation in national and international networks, teaching and supervision in undergraduate and postgraduate training, and leading the international master’s programme. The duty of the associate professor is in particular to develop future oriented research and teaching in the field of intercultural and digital communication.

The successful applicant needs to have strong evidence of research and teaching in intercultural communication. Research in the areas of digital communication and communication technologies is considered an asset. Success in acquiring external funding, supervision of theses, and administrative experience are also considered an asset. The emphasis in the evaluation is based on strong international research profile and on experience in teaching and supervision. In addition, the successful applicant is expected to have broad theoretical and methodological expertise.

Please submit your application at the latest on Monday, August 14th 2017 using the online application form.