Making things happen together

I have been the head of the English philology unit since 2011 and the Deputy Head of the Department of Modern Languages since 2014. I have also worked in many other positions of trust and expertise, such as the Communications Officer and a board member of the Helsinki University Researchers and Teachers Association, a member of the board for the Finnish Society for the Study of English (FINSSE), an academic training programme assessor in Lithuania, the chair of the Faculty of Arts’ teaching skills assessment committee, and the steering committee of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Performing versatile tasks offers new perspectives and acquaintances which can influence the university and your own field of activity, while it also teaches you new things by placing you outside your comfort zone. By working together, things always progress more comfortably than when working alone.

The key long-term and international aspect of my research environment is the Research Unit for the Study of Variation, Contacts and Change in English (Varieng), which was appointed as a Centre of Excellence from 2000–2011 by the Academy of Finland. Varieng is known internationally for their work in creating corpora such as the Helsinki Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence.

By Written by Minna Palander-Collin and Kaija Hartikainen (ed.). Translated by Joseph McVeigh.

Minna Palander-Collin

Minna Johanna Palander-Collin
Born August 31, 1967, Helsinki

PhD 1999, BA 1991 in English Philology with a minor in Romance Philology, University of Helsinki
Subject teacher qualifications and adult education studies 1998, University of Helsinki

2009– Professor of English philology, University of Helsinki
2011–2015 Head of Unit for English philology
2014– Deputy Head of the Department of Modern Languages
2007–2009 Research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
2006–2007 University lecturer at the English Department
2002–2006 Doctoral assistant at the English Department
1989–2001 Various research assistant and teaching positions at the University of Helsinki; English teacher at the Adult Education Centre; postgraduate studies at Oxford University under a grant from the Osk. Huttunen Foundation

Research interests
History of English, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics, language and identity, language change and contact

Publications, research projects and other scientific activities at TUHAT

Photo: Linda Tammisto
Written by Minna Palander-Collin, Kaija Hartikainen (ed.)
Translated by Joseph McVeigh