Päivi Pahta

Päivi Pahta, PhD, is Professor of English Philology in the Unit of Languages of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University. In 2019-2023, she was Dean of the Faculty of Education and Culture. Prior to that, she was Dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences, and Dean of the School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies at the former University of Tampere. She has been Professor at Tampere since 2007 (on leave of absence in 2016-2023). She completed her PhD in 1998 in English Philology at the University of Helsinki, where she also holds the Title of Docent since 2001. She has worked as Research Fellow, Professor of English Language/Linguistics, and Research Professor of Multilingualism in four universities (Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Tampere, Wien). She has over 30 years’ experience of working in various capacities in higher education communities and ambitious research organizations, including Centres of Excellence and Institutes for Advanced Study. She has extensive networks and is regularly involved in the organization and evaluation of international scholarly activities. She is President of the Modern Language Society of Helsinki (UFY) since 2015 and Editor-in-Chief of the society's open-access journal Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (est. 1899, OA since 2020; JUFO 2) and book series Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki (est. 1893, OA since 2023). Pahta is a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters since 2015 and currently its Board Member and Secretary of the Section of the Humanities. 

As a researcher, Pahta’s key areas of interest are related to how language works in meaning-making practices in various social and communicative contexts, with a specific focus on multilingualism; special languages, esp. scientific writing; and digitally-enhanced methodologies, esp. corpus linguistics. Her peer-reviewed publications include 20 books or edited collections and over 100 research articles. Her most important publications take a historical or long-term diachronic view on language practices. Recent international co-publications include The Cambridge Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press 2016), Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond (de Gruyter 2018), Challenging the Myth of Monolingual Corpora (Brill 2018) and Corpus Approaches into World Englishes and Language Contrasts (OA 2019). Her most recent PI role was leading a Research Council of Finland funded research consortium of Tampere and Helsinki Universities (2016-2020, Democratization, Mediatization and Language Practices in Britain, 1700-1950).