Fields of expertise
My research explores second language use and learning, multilingual practices, and the multimodality of interaction. I currently study multilingual manual-work settings, particularly construction sites, and analyse how workplace interaction creates opportunities for developing professional expertise.
I am especially interested in the role of embodied 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 principal investigator of the project Language brokering in multilingual construction work (BRO-CO) funded by the Research Council of Finland (2026–2030). The project examines language brokering both as a multimodal phenomenon of micro-level interaction and as an interactional practice with social consequences both within workplace communities and, more broadly, in an increasingly multilingual and socially stratified working life.
My previous project Globalizing construction work and local language practices (GLO-LO) (Research Council of Finland, 2020–2024) investigated how co-workers coordinate courses of physical action in construction work and how they use different languages as well as bodily and material resources in this.
I have served as the primary supervisor of two completed doctoral disserations on second language use and learning ”in the wild”, by Laura Eilola and Anna-Kaisa Jokipohja. Both dissertations emerged from the project Co-designing social interactions in everyday life (2017-2020), funded by Emil Aaltonen Foundation. In the project, we analysed how second language users of Finnish deploy linguistic, bodily and material resources to construct meaningful social actions in interactions outside of language classrooms, and how they learn the language at the same time. The project also resulted in the jointly authored book Aikuiset maahanmuuttajat arjen vuorovaikutustilanteissa.
I have co-edited three journal special issues. The most recent, Manual Know-How in Interaction, was published in Language & Communication and co-edited with Arja Piirainen-Marsh. The special issue Arts and Embodiment in Language Education emerged from the research project Embodied Language Learning through the Arts (ELLA, 2021–2024), led by Professor Eeva Anttila at the University of the Arts Helsinki and funded by the Kone Foundation. The special issue Bodily Practices in Action Formation and Ascription in Multilingual Interaction was co-edited with Arja Piirainen-Marsh and Søren Eskildsen and published in Social Interaction: Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality in 2022.
Main positions of trust
Member of the ethics committee of the Tampere region (non-medical research)
Member of the Faculty Council (ITC)
Member of the Science Forum at Tampere University
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, 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