Get to know the people behind MultiLEAP
MultiLEAP is a multidisciplinary research community consisting of people working in wide array of subjects at JYU. Please, do not hesitate to contact us!
Click on the images to find each person’s contact information. You can also drop us an email at multileap@jyu.fi
Profiling area leaders
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
My research focuses on (foreign) language learning and teaching practices, on multilingual language education, and multilingual literacy practices. I particularly interested in how multiliteracies features in language education and pedagogical practices can be developed cater for all students, but especially those in vulnerable positions.
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
I’m interested in knowledge building practices across different content subjects from disciplinary literacy perspective, both in CLIL contexts and beyond, and in exploring what insights participants’ ways of orienting to subject-specific modes of meaning.making offer for pedagogical development.
Faculty of Education and Psychology
I am interested in systemic nature of learning communities and design of learning when using active learning approaches to promote learning in multimodal and linguistically diverse settings. My recent publications deal with literacy and assessment practices across curriculum, integration to learning communities and development of teacher education.
Coordinator
I am interested in how highly educated people who have moved to Finland from elsewhere are able to transform their qualifications, language proficiency and cultural knowledge into resources and assets in the job market, and what is the role of multiliteracies in this process.
Tenure Track Professors
Department of Language and Communication Studies
Currently my research focuses on learning and teaching disciplinary literacy in educational contexts. Moreover, my research interests include adolescent and adult literacy, more specifically the role of (informal) literacy learning in lifelong perspective.
Department of Teacher Education
I am interested in the overlapping areas of education, texts, and technologies and how the pedagogy of multiliteracies can promote agentic, critical, and sustainable subjectivity in the ever-complexifying world. My current research aims to unify the fragmented vocabulary of contemporary digital literacies research by identifying the common ground of AI literacy, data literacy, algorithmic literacy and computational literacy among others.
Department of Language and Communication Studies
My scientific research interests focus on the question of multiliteracies for social and digital participation in data-driven media environments. Particularly I am interested in self-performance in digital everyday life, videostreaming cultures and DIY surveillance. My recent research projects include voluntary nonuse of social media; datafication in everyday and perceived vulnerability; and social presence with bots.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Department of Language and Communication Studies
I advocate for development of visual pedagogies in higher education. My research focuses on visual literacy, visual (digital) cultures and communication. I am interested in visual research methods and photography interpretation and their pedagogical potential in advancing students’ visual literacy skills.

Kerttula is currently researching audience reactions to representations of alcohol abuse in video games. His areas of expertise are in the fields of video game media, YouTube, other kinds of contemporary media and media education. Kerttula has previously worked in Transmedia Literacy -project in collaboration with University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and defended his PhD thesis in Contemporary culture at the University of Jyväskylä in January 2022.
Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies
Postdoctoral Researcher in Contemporary Culture Studies and the School of Resource Wisdom (University of Jyväskylä, FI), Adjunct Professor in Media Culture (University of Turku, FI), and a poet and teacher of creative writing. Her research interests include affect, violent fiction, popular culture, feminist posthumanism, ecocriticism, monster studies, and creative research methods. Koistinen is part of the international Monster Network and The Ecocritical Network for Scandinavian Studies (ENSCAN). In MultiLEAP, she will be working on her postdoctoral project “Reading the Anthropocene – Ecological Literacy as Creative Practice” exploring the role of creative writing in the creation of ecologically sustainable futures.
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
My current research focuses on young people’s news consumption in relation to their expression of civic and political issues, participation and media literacy in the digital/social media environment, and the implications these have on youth agency and well-being and the role of traditional/new media in young people’s lives.

Through the post-doctoral research project #RunningWithData, Palsa takes an in-depth look at data literacy within the Finnish running community. This gives a possibility for an inspiring perspective to understand learning, being and the use and non-use of technology in the highly digital world.
His areas of expertise include multiliteracies within transnational and local educational policies, contextualisation of education, competence-based education, media literacy, media education and curriculum research.
Based on his experience in public administration focusing on the policy development and media literacy, Palsa is fascinated with finding new solutions for research-based practice and building bridges between the various sectors of society.