My research has mainly centred on Native North American writing and particularly the Trickster figure as a symbol of cultural survival. Trickster figures are found in virtually every culture (Finns know best Kettu Repolainen, Reynard the Fox).

My ’best memory’ from the University of Helsinki is a recent one. Last autumn the English unit had the chance to visit Stratford-upon-Avon, the birth town of William Shakespeare.

I like to keep in touch with teachers out in the field and have over the years run many seminars for Finnish teachers of English. I’m also an English language examiner for the Finnish Matriculation Examination, so I have a sense of what level of English is ‘out there’.

I’ve always liked teaching and teaching is very important to me. I come from a teaching family in the sense that my mother was a lecturer at a College of Education in London and was still running courses in her eighties.

Articles and projects Mark Shackleton has been involved in.