Maximino Jesus Ruiz Rufino is a Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo, affiliated with the Faculty of Humanities. His academic focus includes Spanish Language, Grammar, and Didactics, with a specialization in Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE). He teaches courses such as SPA1100 (Practical Spanish) and SPA2101 (Spanish Language: Syntax). His research emphasizes interactive language learning tools, polycentric Spanish norms, and digital pedagogical approaches, including collaborative Canvas projects and YouTube-based instructional strategies. He has contributed to the ELENOR corpus and published extensively on topics like translation in education, historical language documentation, and Scandinavian-Spanish linguistic exchanges. His work spans from 2003 to 2022, reflecting a commitment to both traditional and modern language pedagogy. Research interests include the application of technology in language education, multicultural language norms, and historical linguistics. His publications highlight innovative teaching methods and the intersection of digital media with language learning. Notable projects include an interactive Spanish grammar for Norwegians and analyses of 17th-century linguistic documents. No current grants or ongoing projects are listed, but his work contributes to academic-pedagogical initiatives such as Open Days and academic workshops.
Merete Birkelund is an Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. Her work focuses on Romance languages, translation studies, and comparative literature. She co-edited the 2024 anthology Nouvelles tendances de la romanistique scandinave , which explores topics such as translation theory, climate change discourse, and linguistic variation in Romance languages. Her research spans French, Spanish, and Catalan linguistic analysis, with a particular interest in interdisciplinary approaches to language and culture. Publications: The 2024 anthology highlights her contributions to translation studies and climate change communication, featuring collaborative chapters on language policy and multilingual education strategies. The work reflects her engagement with both theoretical and applied linguistic research. Grants/Advising: No specific grants or advising roles mentioned in the text.
Irmelin Kjelaas is an Associate Professor in Norwegian Didactics at NTNU's Department of Teacher Education within the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences. She specializes in applied linguistics, multilingualism, and second language learning, particularly in educational contexts. Her work focuses on language policies, refugee education, and inclusive pedagogical practices for immigrant populations. **Education:** PhD in Applied Linguistics from NTNU (2009), focusing on conversations between unaccompanied minor asylum seekers and social workers. Research Interests: Her key areas include: Multilingualism in vocational and general education Refugee youth integration and language barriers Critical discourse analysis of educational policies Teacher training for linguistic diversity Language ideologies in Norwegian schools Recent Article Trends:** Her publications emphasize: Language policy challenges in vocational education (2025) Integration barriers for newly arrived students (2023-2024) Teacher narratives on refugee inclusion (2022-2023) Bilingualism in Norwegian curriculum design (2019-2020) Roles & Networks:** Co-leads the 'Second Language Didactics Network' with national education stakeholders Member of LiVE (Multilingualism in Vocational Education) and Nordic FLIN networks Board member of cultural platform Anna & Azra Advising & Grants:** Main supervisor of PhD candidate Unni Soltun Andreassen (2019–2023) Involved in EU-funded projects like INCLUSCHOOL and FAMREUN Collaborates with Universities of Oslo, Exeter, and VIA University College Labs/Teams:** Co-leads NTNU's 'Linguistic Diversity in School and Society' research group Develops curricula for vocational teachers via NTNU's Continuing Education programs
Erika Hagelberg is a Professor at the University of Oslo’s Department of Biosciences, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Her work bridges ancient DNA analysis, human molecular genetics, and molecular evolution. Key Research: Ancient DNA typing, population migration (Pacific/SE Asia), Viking Age genetics, Mary Rose crew analysis. Awards: 2016 Cheney Senior Fellowship (Leeds Humanities Research Institute). Publications: 15+ peer-reviewed articles on DNA in historical contexts, Romanov identification, and Pacific colonization. Interdisciplinary Projects: Co-led Thanatos: Dead Bodies – Live Data (Hierapolis, Turkey) and current Norwegian Research Council studies on race/ethnicity in genetic variation research. Teaching: Postgraduate courses on language evolution and scientific writing at UiO.
Anu Laanemets is an Associate Professor in Scandinavian Languages at the University of Oslo , specializing in Norwegian linguistics. Email: anu.laanemets@iln.uio.no Phone: +47 22854906 Office: Niels Henrik Abels vei 36, Henrik Wergelands hus, Oslo Research Interests include historical syntax, comparative linguistics, and corpus-based studies. Recent work explores pannekakesetninger (Norwegian pancake sentences) and existential constructions in Norwegian dialects. Publications highlight collaborations on treebank development and diachronic syntax analysis. She contributes to projects involving grammatical structures and linguistic variation. Completed Projects include research on Scandinavian language corpora and historical syntax patterns.
Gabriela Saldanha Viva is a Researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE) at the University of Oslo. She serves as Project Manager for the Erasmus+ Partnership "DEBATING DEMOCRACY" and coordinates the Honors Certificate on the Politics of Sustainability in Public Health. Additionally, she is a member of the MEDRA research team and organizes the SHE Talks lunchtime seminar series. Her educational background: Degree in Legal Translation from the Universidad de la República (Uruguay) MPhil from UMIST (now the University of Manchester) PhD from Dublin City University, Ireland Dr. Saldanha Viva's research focuses on the intersection of language, knowledge, and power. As a linguist and discourse analyst, she investigates how language shapes collective understandings of the world and influences social processes. Her work spans corpus linguistics, translation studies, and the analysis of health policy discourse, with particular attention to sustainability in healthcare education and democratic concepts in public health. She is also deeply engaged in methodological questions regarding what constitutes valid knowledge in research. Her recent publications reveal a strong trend in applying corpus-based methods to analyze health policy and translation phenomena. She has made significant contributions to understanding subjectification in antimicrobial resistance policy, the role of translators as artistic performers, and the methodological foundations of translation theory. Her work bridges humanities and health sciences, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue. Her scientific awards and honors include: Elected Member of the Executive Council of IATIS IATIS Solidarity & Scientific Excellence conference bursary (2021) Honorary Research Fellow, University of Warwick (2021-2024) Dr. Saldanha Viva has secured research funding including: CircleU Interdisciplinary Research Network: Global Health and Individual Responsibility: Complementary or Contradictory Concepts? (2022-2023) British Academy/AHRC/ESRC Visiting Fellowships Sponsor (2009) Her current projects include the Erasmus+ DEBATING DEMOCRACY initiative and multiple SHE Corpus research groups. She is actively involved in several research groups under SHE, including those investigating antibiotic resistance and complexity in health education, critical concept analysis in health education, Knowledge in Translation (KNOWIT), and the Medicalisation of Democratic Rights in debates about Abortion (MEDRA).
Selim Tiryakiol is a Research Fellow at the Department of Language and Culture , UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His work focuses on heritage language acquisition, particularly examining how linguistic and extra-linguistic factors influence language development and maintenance. Research interests include: Heritage language bilingualism Morphosyntactic and prosodic acquisition Community engagement's role in language competence Individual and social variables in language development Notable scientific award: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (MSCA) . Current project CODE-V (2023-2025) investigates capacity, opportunity, and desire in heritage language variation. Recent publications emphasize: Heritage language input quality vs. quantity Comparative analysis of Turkish monolingual and heritage speakers Pedagogical grammar frameworks for Turkish Memory systems and cognitive factors in language learning He is affiliated with research groups AcqVA Aurora , C-LaBL , and AcqVA-Nor , focusing on experimental and theoretical approaches to language variation.
Stephan Guth is a Professor in the Department for Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, specializing in Middle Eastern Studies. He has been a faculty member since 2007 and was promoted to Professor in 2009. His academic career spans multiple European institutions including the University of Bern (1996-2007), where he completed his habilitation in 2003, and Munich University (2005-2006), where he served as guest lecturer and vice-head of department. Professor Guth's educational background includes studies in 'Islamwissenschaft,' Modern German Literature, and Philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Tübingen in Germany. He earned his MA in 1987 and PhD in 1992. Prior to his academic appointments in Switzerland and Norway, he was a researcher at the German Institute for Oriental Studies in Istanbul and Beirut (1992-1996) and a guest lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin (1993). His research focuses on Modern Arabic and Turkish literature, Comparative Literature, and Etymology and Conceptual History of Arabic. Professor Guth is particularly known for his work on the EtymArab project, an etymological dictionary of the Arabic language and culture that examines linguistic roots in relation to Arab mental and cultural history. His scholarly approach combines philological precision with cultural analysis, exploring how language reflects and shapes societal transformations. He has published extensively on topics ranging from Arabic etymology to literary modernity and cultural concepts. Professor Guth's recent publications demonstrate a consistent engagement with emerging subjectivity in Middle Eastern literature, particularly during the 'long 19th century' and the Nahda period. His work spans etymological studies of Arabic roots, analyses of literary movements, and examinations of cultural concepts like generosity, emotions, and national identity. The EtymArab project represents a major contribution to Arabic linguistics, while his analyses of post-Arab Spring realities offer valuable insights into contemporary Middle Eastern societies. Secretary General (2006-08, 2014-) and former President (2008-12) of The European Association for Modern Arabic Literature (EURAMAL) Co-editor of mîzân - Studies in the literatures of the Islamic World Co-editor of Porta Linguarum Orientalium Co-editor of Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies Consultant for 'Arabic Literature' in Store norske leksikon Professor Guth teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Middle Eastern literatures, including MØNA1300 (Literature History and Language Relations in the Middle East and North Africa) and various specialized topics in Arabic Studies at the master's level. His teaching reflects his research expertise, particularly in modern Arabic fiction, dramatic arts, and key concepts of Arabic language and culture. He leads several ongoing research projects including 'An Etymological Dictionary of Arabic Language and Culture (EtymArab),' 'The Modern Subject Sensing its Agency,' 'Civilizing Emotions,' and 'In 2016: How it felt to live in the Arab World five years after the 'Arab Spring.' These projects examine the intersection of language, literature, and cultural history in the Middle East across different historical periods.
Evelina Leivada is an ICREA Research Professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), affiliated with the Centre de Lingüística Teòrica (CLT) and Department of Catalan Philology since 2023. She earned her PhD with highest honors from Universitat de Barcelona in 2015 under an FPI grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, following which she taught at Cyprus University of Technology and held a postdoctoral position at the University of Cyprus funded by the A. G. Leventis Foundation (2016-2017). Her research pioneers bilingual/bidialectal cognition, in vivo and in silico language processing (using humans and Large Language Models), and language variation. As a founding member of the Cyprus Acquisition Team since 2009, she investigates language acquisition dynamics, while her work with Grambank databases and parametric comparison methods enables large-scale analyses of linguistic diversity across 79 languages and 11 language families. Her scientific recognition includes: ICREA Research Professorship (permanent competitive position) Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellowship (2020-2022) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (2017-2019) FPI doctoral grant Selection for Aurora Outstanding research initiative (2018-2020) She actively promotes open science as Associate Editor for Psycholinguistics at the Platinum Open Access journal Biolinguistics since 2019, and co-leads collaborative projects through the Cyprus Acquisition Team and CLT at UAB. Her recent work developing multi-metric algorithms for language distance measurement demonstrates methodological innovation in cognitive linguistics. Current research integrates computational modeling with human cognition studies, focusing on how language distance impacts bilingual processing through analyses of 56,122 participants across diverse linguistic landscapes.
Professor Edit Bugge is a sociolinguist at the University of Bergen's Department of Language, Literature, Mathematics and Interpreting, leading the IMPECT research project (2021-2025) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. Her work focuses on language variation/change, citizenship language requirements, and adult second language acquisition, particularly among low-literate migrants. She has managed projects examining Faroese dialect attitudes, Norwegian orthographic reforms, and multilingual early childhood education. Prof. Bugge teaches courses on Norwegian language teaching, sociolinguistics, and research methodology, including courses like UVN801 (Teaching Adult Immigrants Norwegian) and MPUV505 (Educational Research in Practice). Her research bridges linguistic theory with policy, addressing societal impacts of language testing and migration policies. Her research spans sociolinguistic fieldwork in Norway, the Faroe Islands, and South Africa, exploring topics like dialect perception (e.g., Faroese and Shetlandic), language reform implementation (e.g., the Norwegian pronoun 'hen'), and literacy development in marginalized groups. Bugge's interdisciplinary approach combines ethnography, corpus linguistics, and policy analysis to address issues of language as a tool for inclusion/exclusion. Key contributions include scoping reviews of LESLLA research (low-educated second language learners) and critical analyses of citizenship language policies. Recent work highlights migrants' narratives of navigating legal integration systems, revealing systemic barriers faced by low-literacy groups. Her publications span academic journals (e.g., Journal of Sociolinguistics , British Journal of Sociology of Education ) and edited volumes on language education and policy. Bugge actively participates in national/international conferences, delivering keynote addresses on topics like early childhood language socialization and the hidden costs of migration-related linguistic testing.
Jan Ragnar Hagland is a Professor at NTNU’s Department of Nordic Studies and Literature, specializing in Old Norse philology, runic studies, and the history of the Norwegian language. His research focuses on medieval legal texts, Icelandic sagas, and the intersection of literacy practices with socio-historical contexts. He has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles, including editions of medieval legal codes, translations of sagas, and studies on runic inscriptions. Affiliations: NTNU, Faculty of Humanities; Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Key Projects: Trøndersk Språkhistorie (Trøndelag Language History Project), Runestone Analysis, Saga Translation Projects His work bridges textual analysis and historical context, examining how language and literature reflect cultural, legal, and social dynamics in medieval and early modern Scandinavia. Notably, he explores the role of literacy in shaping local identities and the transmission of legal and mythological knowledge.
Natalia Mitrofanova is an Associate Professor and Leader of the C-LaBL Language Domain at the Department of Language and Culture, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Her research focuses on multilingual language acquisition and processing, particularly in child and adult populations. She employs experimental methods such as eye-tracking and artificial language learning to study phenomena like grammatical aspect, case, and cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in third language (L3) acquisition. Her work emphasizes structural similarity effects and the role of heritage languages in shaping L3 development. Current projects include investigations into bilingual processing mechanisms and the impact of visual stimuli on language comprehension. She teaches courses on syntax, language acquisition, and second language variation. Mitrofanova collaborates with international research groups, including AcqVA (Acquisition, Variation & Attrition), the Psycholinguistics of Language Representation (PoLaR) lab, and C-LaBL. Her research spans languages such as Russian, German, Norwegian, and Spanish, with a focus on heritage speaker populations in diverse sociolinguistic contexts. Key areas of contribution include: Experimental design in L3 studies Grammatical aspect processing across languages Heritage language maintenance and attrition Bilingual cognitive advantages and processing mechanisms Her recent work explores bidirectional CLI in multilingual children, leveraging ERP and eye-tracking techniques to uncover cognitive representations of grammatical features.
Solena Diane Candice Pradayrol is an Assistant Professor at the National Centre for English and Other Foreign Languages in Education (Norway). Her work focuses on innovative teaching methods for French as a Second Language (FLE), including digital tools like Escape Rooms, flipped classrooms, and collaborative learning strategies. She emphasizes pedagogical approaches centered on student engagement and practical application. Her academic background includes teaching experience in lower secondary schools (French, English, Home Economics, and Physical Education). She has contributed to research groups like TOOL-Kit and served as a union representative for Utdanningsforbundet (Norway's largest teachers' union). Pradayrol has authored numerous publications on FLE methodology, digital pedagogy, and assessment techniques. Recent works include articles on digital tool utilization in education, oral proficiency evaluation, and thematic teaching materials (e.g., Olympic Games resources). Her research also explores cultural integration in language learning and teacher mentorship. Key areas: Digital innovation in education, FLE curriculum design, oral assessment strategies Highlighted projects: Development of digital escape rooms, Flipped Classroom methodologies, and FLE materials
Ingebjørg Tonne is a Professor of Nordic languages/Norwegian as a second language at the Department of Linguistics and Nordic Studies (ILN) at the University of Oslo. She previously served as deputy head of MultiLing, center for multilingualism (a Center for Excellence in Research funded by the Norwegian Research Council) from January 1, 2022 to May 1, 2024. Earlier, from December 1, 2015 to June 30, 2017, she was head of teaching at ILN. Her academic career spans multiple institutions including the University of Oslo, Oslo Metropolitan University (where she taught from 2002-2014), and NTNU. Tonne holds a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Oslo (2001), with a contrastive dissertation on aspect in Norwegian-Spanish-English. Her educational background prepared her for extensive work in linguistics and language education. Professor Tonne's research focuses on the relationship between grammar teaching and writing development in school students, and the interplay between linguistic factors related to reading and writing skills. She is particularly interested in grammatical contrasts between different languages and how contrastive work can contribute to increased metalinguistic awareness in students. Her methodological approaches span corpus studies, ethnographically oriented studies, interview-based research, conceptual discussions about language concepts like "mother tongue," and qualitative studies of teachers' written assessments of student texts. She has made significant contributions to understanding how grammar instruction impacts literacy development among second language learners. Her publication record shows a consistent focus on second language acquisition, particularly Norwegian as a second language, with emphasis on grammar instruction, writing development, and literacy. Over the past decade, her work has increasingly examined teacher responses to student writing, the role of literature in language education, and the conceptual frameworks that shape our understanding of language learning. Her research often bridges theoretical linguistics with practical classroom applications, demonstrating how linguistic insights can improve language teaching methodologies. Professor Tonne has supervised students in the master's program in multicultural and international education at OsloMet, focusing on sociolinguistic topics related to human rights, language rights, and the multicultural school in Norway. She was part of the "Multiplicity Project" at OsloMet, which investigated how increased reading of literature could improve students' reading and writing skills compared to ordinary textbook use. Her teaching responsibilities at the University of Oslo include courses NOAS1100, NOAS2101, NOAS2102, NOAS4101, and NOAS4103, all related to Norwegian language education. She is an active member of MultiLing, the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the lifespan, which was designated as a Center of Excellence by the Norwegian Research Council. This center brings together researchers from multiple disciplines to study multilingualism from various perspectives, including linguistic, cognitive, social, and educational dimensions. Professor Tonne's work contributes significantly to the center's focus on how multilingualism develops and functions in different societal contexts.
Eivind Nessa Torgersen is a Professor of English Language at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), serving as Head of the English and Foreign Languages Department within the Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences. He holds a visiting professorship at Nord University, where he teaches phonetics and supervises doctoral students. His research focuses on sociolinguistic variation, particularly in London English, multilingual education in Norway, and second language acquisition. He earned his PhD in 2004 from the University of Reading with a study on speech processing strategies in L1 and L2 learners. His work bridges sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics, examining topics like vowel systems, pragmatic markers, and speech rhythm. He has led major projects, including the Research Council of Norway-funded Acquisition of English in the Multilingual Classroom (2018–2023). Recent publications highlight his expertise in multicultural London English, multilingual classroom dynamics, and phonetic analysis. He advises PhD candidates Dianna Walla and Tone Stuler Myhre, and collaborates with institutions like Lancaster University and Nord University. His contributions to language policy and teacher training emphasize leveraging students’ multilingual resources in EFL education.
