Responsibilities
My research explores second language use and learning, multilingual practices, and the multimodality of interaction. Currently, I do research on multilingual manual labour workplaces and analyze how workplace interactions provide opportunities for developing professional expertise.
I am interested in the role of bodily and material resources in action formation and ascription. My recent publications address the relevance of manual know-how in formulating social actions and ascribing meaning to them, and the role of hand gestures in giving instructions, checking understanding, and securing intersubjectivity in various multilingual interactions.
I am the PI of the Academy of Finland funded project Globalizing construction work and local language practices (GLO-LO) (2020-2024). The project uses conversation analysis to investigate how co-workers coordinate courses of physical action in consruction work and how they use different languages as well as bodily and material resources in this.
During the last years, I have also been involved in the research project Embodied Language Learning through the Arts (ELLA) (2021-2024) led by professor Eeva Anttila (The University of Arts Helsinki) and funded by Kone foundation.
My previous project ‘Co-designing social interactions in everyday life’ (2017-2020, funded by Emil Aaltonen foundation) analysed how second language users of Finnish deploy linguistic, bodily and material resources to construct meaningful social actions in interactions outside of language classrooms, i.e. ‘in the Wild’, and how they learn the language at the same time.
Main positions of trust
Member of the ethics committee of the Tampere region (non-medical research)
Member of the Faculty Council (ITC)
Selected publications
Lilja, N. & Piirainen-Marsh. A. (2025). Manual Know-How in Interaction. Language and Communication 10, 50 – 56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2025.03.002
Lilja, N., Svennevig, J., Jokipohja, A. K., Piirainen-Marsh, A., Eilola, L., Eskildsen, S., Gudmundssen J., Härmävaara, H-I., Poikonen, J., Scümchen, N., Urbanik, P. & Wagner, J. (2025). Manual Interventions. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 58(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2025.2450991
Lilja, N. S., & Jokipohja, A.-K. E. (2024). Gestural depictions in requests for objects. Language & Communication, 99(November 2024), 159-173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2024.10.002
Schümchen, N., & Lilja, N. (2024). ‘No trash – do not touch’: Handwritten textual objects at a construction site. Discourse & Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/17504813241240394
Jokipohja, Anna-Kaisa & Lilja Niina (2022). Depictive hand gestures as candidate understandings. Research on Language and Social Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2022.2067425
Jusslin, S., Korpinen, K., Lilja, N., Martin, R., Lehtinen-Schnabel, J., & Anttila, E. (2022). Embodied learning and teaching approaches in language education: A mixed studies review. Educational Research Review, 37, [100480]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2022.100480
Eilola, Laura & Niina Lilja (2021). The Smartphone as a Personal Cognitive Artifact Supporting Participation in Interaction. The Modern Language Journal. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12697
Lilja, Niina & Arja Piirainen-Marsh (2019). How hand gestures contribute to action ascription. Research on Language and Social Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2019.1657275
Lilja, Niina & Arja Piirainen-Marsh (2019). Connecting the Language Classroom and the Wild: Re-enactments of Language Use Experiences. Applied Linguistics 40 (4), 594–623, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx045