Mélodine Sommier

Mélodine Sommier

Academy Research Fellow
Unit
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department / Division
Department of Language and Communication Studies
Room number
A 320.5
Mobile
+358503463707
Postal address
Seminaarinkatu 15
Fields of science
518 Media and communications

Biography

I am a Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Communication and currently working as an Academy Research Fellow at the Department of Language and Communication Studies. I also hold the title of Docent in Intercultural Communication at Åbo Academi University, Turku. 

I work with a broad range of topics related to interculturality, race and whiteness, media representations, and eco-social sustainability. My research project on ‘racial landscapes’ (2022-2027, Research Council of Finland) focuses on the way race and racism materialize in everyday urban spaces across Europe in ways that contribute to (re)produce and contest existing discourses and processes of racialization.

I teach in the Language, Globalization and Intercultural Communication (LAGIC) MA program and supervise Master's theses and doctoral dissertations.   

I am currently the Chair of the Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU), an Associate Editor for the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, and an active member of the Language Campus Equity Team.

Research interests

I am interested in how dimensions of difference are used as discursive and interactional resources to (re)produce oppression and privilege. My main research interests include: 

- media representations

- race, racism and whiteness

- decolonial ecology

- critical intercultural education  

Publications

Publication
2025
Available through Open Access
The Concise Routledge Encyclopaedia of New Concepts for Interculturality.
Sommier, Mélodine