Notes on Contributors
Asbjørg Westum is a Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Languages at Jönköping University, Sweden. Her research interests lies mainly in the field of language and culture, where she is currently investigating the emerging learned language in Swedish religious texts of the late Middle Ages. Her more recent interests include adult-background refugee education and literacy development, and North Sámi school children’s writing in Sami, English, and the national majority language (Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish).
Coppélie Cocq is Professor of European Ethnology and Associate Professor in Sámi Studies. Her research interests lie in the fields of folklore studies and digital humanities with specific focus on storytelling and revitalization in Indigenous contexts. Cocq current research focuses more particularly on how digital environments and digital media are shaped and used in Sámi communities for the production and transmission of knowledge. Her recent publications include, among others, the articles “Reading small data in indigenous contexts: ethical perspectives” (2016) in: Research Methods for Reading Digital Data in the Digital Humanities, Eds. Griffin and Hayler; “Mobile Technology in Indigenous Landscapes” (2016), Traditional knowledge—New experts. Cultural Analysis, Vol. 16 (2017) and Turning the Inside Out: Social Media and the Broadcasting of Indigenous Discourse, European Journal of Communication (2016).
Dean Sutherland is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Communication disorders, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. His research interests include understanding the communication and literacy needs and perspectives of children and adults who experience development challenges and differences (e.g., children and adults with autism). Dean has also undertaken research in the field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication and child language development. He is passionate about helping people of all ages to communicate and participate in families, and education and healthcare contexts.
Eva Lindgren is Professor of Language Teaching and Learning at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests include curriculum, multilingualism, and literacy with a particular focus on indigenous perspectives, writing and writing development across languages. Other lines of research include participatory research designs with schools and communities as well as large register data studies of the relationship between school achievements, linguistic background, socio-economic factors and future life chances.
Hanna Outakoski is a Senior Lecturer in North Sámi at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. She is currently doing research on teaching of heritage language writing at Nordic universities and in Sámi medium primary schools. One of the aims of the current research is to examine how to implement Indigenous teaching methods so as to strengthen the position of Sámi writing among Sámi youth. Apart from literacy studies, her research interests lie on North Sámi grammar and syntax, as well as on the possibilities and potential of using virtual worlds and virtual classrooms for language revitalization.
James Barrett is an independent scholar, cultural worker and teacher. His scientific activity moves within the digital humanities. Barrett has been the applicant and/or a participant in research projects via the EU, Cambridge University, Umeå University, Stanford University and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Added to these research projects are two national culture projects working with digital media and community (2015, 2017–2018). Barrett has developed and taught courses at undergraduate and graduate levels in “digital literacy”, “digital literature” and “digital textuality”. Barrett’s scientific activities focus on key issues regarding the importance of digital discourse and technology in literature, film and visual arts with a number of publications and presentations from internationally recognized contexts. Barrett is based in Stockholm Sweden and can be reached at
Kirk P.H. Sullivan is Professor of Linguistics at the Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. His research interests lie at the nexus of linguistics, cognition and education, and include writing processes, the teaching of writing, multilingualism, indigenous writing, doctoral studies, and forensic linguistics. He held the Swedish Research Council grant: Literacy in Sápmi: multilingualism, revitalization and literacy development in the global north (2012–2016), that informs his contributions together with colleagues in this volume. Together with Eva Lindgren, he edited the 2006 Studies in Writing volume, Computer keystroke logging and writing: Methods and applications, and has recently edited, again together with Eva Lindgren the forthcoming Studies in Writing volume, Observing writing: Insights from keystroke logging and handwriting.
Laara Fitznor (Nisichawaysihk Cree Nation, Manitoba, Canada) teaches Aboriginal/Indigenous Education and Cross Cultural Education in the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba. She grounds decolonizing, bridging and Indigenous pedagogies in her work to challenge past wrongs, and to collaborate in a way of transformative possibilities toward relevance, respect, reciprocity and responsibility. Her publications include her doctoral thesis Aboriginal Educator’s Stories: Rekindling Aboriginal Worldviews; and book chapters The Circle of Life: Affirming Aboriginal Philosophies in Everyday Living; The Power of Indigenous Knowledge: Naming and Identity and Colonization in Canada, and Indigenous Scholars; and Writing through Narratives and Storying for Healing and Bridging (this chapter is published in a book co-edited by Laara Fitznor and Joy Hendry titled Anthropologists, Indigenous Scholars and the Research Endeavour), and with M. Gallagher (2016) Culturally Responsive and Innovative Student Support Programs CAN overcome Issues of Poverty and Poor Educational Outcomes for Indigenous Students.
Mark de Vos is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Linguistics and is Deputy Dean of Humanities at Rhodes University in South Africa. He obtained his Masters Degree (2001) in Linguistics from Tromsø University and read towards his PhD (2005) at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. He has diverse interests in research, Teaching & Learning and Higher Eduction, specializing in theoretical, comparative syntax as well as psycholinguistic approaches to reading literacy in Bantu languages. His research covers syntax and formal language models, reading literacy, phonological, morphological and semantic awarenesses in reading, syntactic linearization, English and Afrikaans grammar and syntax, Pseudo-coordination, adpositions and agreement phenomena. As Co-chair of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (formerly LSSA President), he has spoken on the need for transformed and transformative curricula that are socially responsive and which support the learning needs of a diverse student body.
Nancy H. Hornberger is Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Her research interests include educational linguistics, linguistic ethnography of education, bilingualism and biliteracy, multilingual language policy, and Indigenous language revitalization; she has taught, lectured, and advised internationally on these topics. With sustained commitment and work with Quechua speakers and bilingual intercultural education in the Andes beginning in 1974, she has also served as U.S. State Department English Language Specialist, United Nations consultant, Fulbright Senior Specialist in Paraguay, New Zealand, and South Africa, and visiting professor at Brazil’s Universidade de Campinas, South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Sweden’s University of Umeå. Recent publications include an edited volume Honoring Richard Ruiz and his Work on Language Planning and Bilingual Education (Multilingual Matters, 2017) and state-of-the-art review article on “Ethnography of Language Planning and Policy” co-authored with her students (Language Teaching, 2018).
Nathan John Albury is a research fellow at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics in the Netherlands. His research resides in the sociology of language, with a focus on how local linguistic epistemologies and ideologies shape language policy from the top down, and perceptions of it from the bottom-up. His work is especially committed to investigating and discussing a broader range of linguistic worldviews than are generally traversed in traditional scholarship, including in the context of Indigenous minority languages. He holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics from the University of Oslo’s Centre of Excellence for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, has served as an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and was a visiting researcher to the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. He came to academia after a career in immigration and multicultural policy analysis in the Australian and New Zealand governments.
Nicholas Limerick is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His main areas of research interest include linguistic anthropology, social movements and the state in schooling, Indigenous language and culture revitalization, multilingualism, and citizenship. He is currently drafting publications from his first project, which is based on more than two years of ethnographic research with directors and teachers of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador. He is involved in ongoing projects related to multilingualism and the politics of education in the Andes. Nicholas received his Ph.D. in anthropology and in educational linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ola Karlsson has worked as language advisor at the Swedish Language Council since 1995. He is the editor of “Svenska skrivregler” (the official Swedish style guide) and “Myndigheternas skrivregler” (a standardized style guide version for authorities and public bodies), which include amoung other things recommendations for electronic writing and the use of language checkers. Ola is also the council’s editor of new words (collecting and making lists of new words) and media language advisor. A main task of his work concerns language technology (language tools), electronic writing and web accessibility. He has previously done research on the use of language checkers by L2 users.
Rickard Domeij holds a doctorate in computational linguistics from Stockholm University. His main areas of research are digital humanities, digital literacy, language tools and services, digital usability, accessibility and inclusion. He has worked with language planning and policy at the Language Council of Sweden as an expert in language technology since 2004. The Language Council is a department of The Institute for Language and Folklore, the official language research and language planning organization in Sweden. A central part of his work is to monitor and promote the development and use of language technology and infrastructure for the languages in Sweden, in particular Swedish, Swedish sign language and the five official minority languages, Finnish, Meänkieli, Sami, Romani and Yiddish.
Shelley Stagg Peterson is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute of Education of the University of Toronto, Canada and a former elementary teacher in rural Canadian schools. She teaches graduate courses and conducts research in the teaching and assessment of writing, young children’s language learning, and children’s literature. Her seven-year collaborative action research project, Northern Oral Language and Writing through Play (NOW Play), involves young children and their teachers in northern rural and Indigenous communities. Supporting and assessing young children’s language, literacy and Indigenous cultural knowledge through play is the primary focus of the project.
Sjur Nørstebø Moshagen is the head of the Divvun language technology group at UiT the Arctic University of Norway. He has worked with language technology in various forms since 1994, and since 1997 on developing proofing tools using finite state technologies. Since 2003 he has worked on language technology for the Sámi languages of Norway, and minority languages in general, especially languages with complex morphology and morphophonology. He has over the last decade been the driving force behind developing an open-source platform for building all natural language tools, in a way that is appropriate for morphologically complex languages.
Trond Trosterud is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Tromsø. He has published on the morphology and syntax of various Uralic and North Germanic languages, and on sociolinguistic topics related to Russia and the Nordic countries. For the last 16 years he has led the Giellatekno Saami Language Technology Center at the University of Tromsø, developing linguistic models and tools for North Saami and other circumpolar languages. His current research area is modeling (in the form of finite-state automata) of the grammar of Saami and other circumpolar languages. His recent research work includes machine translation between different Saami languages, as well as research on linguistic optimisation for proofing tools.
Virginia Langum is Associate Professor of English Literature at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden, and Pro Futura fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden. She teaches and publishes in premodern studies, literature and medicine, medical humanities, medical humanities pedagogy, graduate education, and academic writing. She is currently the principal investigator of a project on “Migration and Mental Illness in Literature” funded by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation and also serves as the director of the Faculty of Arts Doctoral Research College at Umeå University.