Rate My Professor Leena Kolehmainen

Leena Kolehmainen is Professor of German language in the Department of Languages at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki, appointed in August 2023. She holds a Master of Arts in Germanic Philology from the University of Jyväskylä (1997), a Doctor of Philosophy in Germanic Philology from the University of Helsinki (2005), and the title of Docent in Germanic Philology from the University of Helsinki (2011). Her career includes serving as Professor of German language at the University of Turku (2017–2023) and Associate Professor of German language at the University of Eastern Finland (2013–2017). Earlier positions at the University of Eastern Finland encompassed lecturer, university lecturer, senior researcher, post-doctoral researcher, and acting professor roles from 2006 to 2013. She has held visiting appointments as part-time professor at the University of Graz (2020) and visiting researcher at Saarland University (2010, 2024, 2025). Kolehmainen supervises doctoral students in the Doctoral Programme in Language Studies and is associated with Germanic Philology and the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies.

Her research examines the status of German language in Finland, covering language policy, ideologies, attitudes, multilingualism among individuals, communities, and institutions, and language-related cultural memory. Other areas include linguistic landscapes in urban public spaces, digital environments, museums, and cemeteries; linguistic accessibility; multilingual practices; text corpora; proper names; grammar phenomena such as meteorological events, valency, argument structure, and grammaticalization; and intersections between translation studies and language studies, including non-professional translation and minority language translation. She has authored or co-authored 105 research outputs, including 40 articles, 30 book chapters, 19 anthologies or special issues, and one book. Notable publications are 'The linguistics of weather: Cross-linguistic patterns of meteorological expressions' (2010), 'What is “language making”?' (2022), 'PRÄFIX-UND PARTIKEL VERBEN IM DEUTSCH-FINNISCHEN KONTRAST' (2006), 'Weather and language' (2012), 'Arjen näkymätön kääntäminen. Translatorisen toiminnan jatkumot' (2015), 'Introduction: Multiple roles of translation in the context of minority languages and revitalisation' (2017), and 'The world is raining: Meteorological predicates and their subjects in a typological perspective' (2015). Kolehmainen is an elected member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Section of Humanities, 2017–) and the Academy Club for Young Scientists (2009). She received awards for outstanding master’s thesis (1998) and studies in language pedagogy (1997), as well as the Germanicas Liebling Good Teacher Award (2023). Currently, she serves on the Scientific Council for Social Sciences and Humanities at the Research Council of Finland (2025–2027).