I work as a senior lecturer in Finnish language at the Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä in Finland. I teach courses related to text and discourse analysis, literacy, academic literacies and literacy pedagogy. My research interests include adolescent and adult reading literacy, reading engagement as informal literacy learning, and disciplinary literacy.
I have worked in several international reading literacy assessments since the late 1990’s, such as the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) as well as the IEA’s Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2011). I served as a member in the European Commission’s High level Group on Literacy (2011–2012), and I am a member of the Reading Expert Group for PISA 2018. Moreover, I worked in a PIAAC-related NordForsk project (SASLA) studying the factors related to adult literacy.
Currently I work in a project focusing on historical literacy practices in Finnish general upper secondary schools. Since March 2018, I am also Adjunct professor in the field of Reading literacy pedagogy, specifically assessment, in the Faculty of Education at the University of Oulu.