My professorial duties have taken me to the universities of Oulu, Turku and Helsinki, as well as at the University of Tübingen in Germany. In addition, I have been a visiting scholar and lecturer in dozens of German, Austrian, Swiss, Dutch and French universities.

I was a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim  (1988-2012); Board member of the Linguistic Association of Finland (1979-81); member of the Board of Trustees of the Finnish Institute in Germany (1991-99); Chairman of the DAAD association of Finland (1993-2012); Founding member and Board member of the European Society of Phraseology (1999-2006) and chairman (2010-14); Board member of the Deutscher Bibliotheksverein, Helsinki (‘German library association’)  (2001-14); Vice-chairman of the Modern Language Society (2002-14); and chairman of the Academic Advisory Council for the comprehensive German-Finnish general dictionary  (1997-2008).

I have participated in various tasks in the following serial publications: Der Ginkgo-Baum. Germanistisches Jahrbuch für Nordeuropa (member of the academic council and the editorial board) 1991-98; Germanistik (Tübingen, member of the academic council) 1996- ; Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik (Bern, corresponding member) 1998- ; Finnische Beiträge zur Germanistik (Frankfurt am Main, joint editor with Irma Hyvärinen) 1998- ; Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (member of the academic council) 2000-2002 and 2014- ; Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki and Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (member of the editorial board) 2002-2014. I was selected to become a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters in 1995 and was the chairman of the linguistics unit (2004-09).