About
I am a doctoral researcher of literature in language education and an English and Spanish teacher by profession. Currently, I work at the University of Turku as the project coordinator for the ONNI-project and am finishing a doctoral dissertation at Tampere University, Finland, where I also received my Master's degree and subject teacher's professional qualifications in 2013.
As a language educator, I have experience in teaching English and Spanish to learners of all ages, from young learners to adults, of heterogenous backgrounds and in diverse educational contexts. Reading, particularly reading literary texts, has always been a deeply meaningful life practice for me. As a language educator, I have wanted to share these meanings with my learners and to learn more about why we read literary texts in different contexts.
Research-informed educational practice has been an integral part of my teacher education, and in my doctoral research I have specialized in the inclusion of literature in language education, which marries my love of reading and sharing meanings related to reading with language education theory and practice.
In my research, I use methods like interviews, surveys, qualitative content analysis and literary analysis to explore and articulate the role of literature in foreign language education, so that educators, teacher educators, parents and curriculum designers are better able to educate and train multilingual learners who are responsible, able to collaborate and take initiative for the benefit of humanity at large as well as the environment.