I am professor of English sociolinguistics with an interest in the many manifestations of the relationship between language and society. In my research and teaching activities, I investigate this relationship from different perspectives, mainly as a conversation and discourse analyst. A special focus of my work is multilingualism and the role of English as a (global) lingua franca and its realisations in conversations of different kinds. In a recent research project, I analysed the structural and interactional characteristics of media sports interviews and their media social functions.

For my current research project on social interaction in heritage environments, I broaden my focus to include not only the linguistic level of social interaction, but also the spatial and embodied dimensions that are part of our everyday interactions. I am particularly interested in the ways people interact in and with spaces that are in some way characterized by pastness, such as open-air museums and ancient monuments. I use audiovisual recordings of different interactional events taking place in such spaces to investigate how we appropriate and engage with them. A very exciting aspect of the project is its interdisciplinarity which gives me the opportunity to integrate insights from archaeology as well as museology into the linguistic and interactional analysis.

The need to revert to online teaching during the pandemic has inspired me to intensify my activities in the development of blended and online collaborative teaching formats. Together with a colleague at the University of Minnesota Duluth, I am working on new collaborative teaching programs with a focus on sustainability, a topic which is gaining more and more ground also within linguistics (ecolinguistics).