I serve as the Head for the Centre of Applied Language Studies (CALS) at the University of Jyväskylä (JYU).
I have carried out several individual research projects, which have lead to internationally significant data bases on Hungarian language minorities in Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. In international co-operation widespread analyses of language ideologies, linguistic landscapes and language policies in multilingual regions and educational institutions have been published in relevant journals in English and in regionally important forums in Hungarian and in German, several publications have been translated to other languages as well. In the past five years I have served as the JYU lead researcher in several international projects, developing co-creative citizen science and participatory research in the field of applied language studies. For my projects, I have received over one million euros competitive funding.
I have wide peer review experience for journals, including open peer review. I serve as an evaluator for national science councils and the European Commission, including Marie Curie-Skłodowska grant evaluations. I have also been a European Parliament expert twice on language policy issues related to language minorities. I co-chair the FORTHEM Alliance's Multilingualism in School and Higher Education Lab since 2020 and serve as Finland's Foreign Language Assessment National Expert for OECD PISA 2025. I am an authorized assessor for Finnish National Certificates of Language Proficiency (for Finnish and English).
I have published over 30 Open Access articles in the leading and emerging journals of applied language studies and related fields. My papers have appeared e.g. in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, Multilingua, Language Awareness, Compare, Language and Education, Linguistics and Education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, International Journal of Multilingualism, Visual Communication, Language and Linguistics Compass, Language Policy, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, and Journal of Sociolinguistics.
My current service for journal editorial boards includes: Hungarian Journal of Applied Linguistics; Magyar Nyelvjárások; Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication; Fórum Társadalomtudományi Szemle and Anyanyelv-pedagógia.
Currently, I serve as a Citizen Science WP leader in the IMPACT project funded by the Research Council of Finland (PI Mari Honko/ CALS). I also represent JYU as a researcher in the project ‘Nordic Basic Schools as Past, Present and Future Sites for Solving the Challenges of Making Diverse Inclusive Knowledge-Based Societies’, funded by the Future Challenges in the Nordics research program. My research contributes significantly to the understanding and application of language policy in multilingual contexts and the advancement of co-creative citizen science methodologies in linguistic research.
I defended my Ph.D. at JYU in 2009. In 2011, I was granted by the Academy of Finland to carry out a post-doctoral project at JYU on language ideologies among Hungarians in Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine. My Academy Research Fellowship project (2016-2022) at CALS developed new visual and digital methods for participatory data generation. In 2019-2022, I represented JYU as a researcher in the Erasmus+ Key Action: ‘TRANSLANGEDUROM – Translanguaging for Equal Opportunities: Speaking Romani at School’. In 2021-2023, I served as the JYU PI for the project ‘A European multilingual citizen science research project in co-located schools in Finland and Italy’, funded by the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
