Eija Ventola is professor of English Philology, Department of English, University of Helsinki. After completing two M.A.s at the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and Macquarie University (Australia), she took her Ph.D. in systemic-functional linguistics at the University of Sydney. She has held academic and research positions in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Finland as well as guest professorships in the USA, Spain and Brazil. She has published widely in the following fields: social semiotics, systemic-functional linguistics, discourse analysis, text linguistics, multimodality, translation studies. Her interests include: everyday discourse, service interactions,written and spoken academic genres, educational linguistics, business language, Australian language and literature.
She has constantly striven to develop new research methods and practical applications in applied linguistics and discourse analysis. She has recently worked extensively on multimodality, in particular on such theoretical, methodological and applied issues as integration of visual with text in the field of tourism and the traditional and Internet press, discourses and spatial semiotic systems, multimodal corpus annotation, applications of multimodal, teaching materials, multimodality and museumdesigns. She initiated the international congress series on Multimodal Discourse by organizing the first event in Salzburg in 2002 (selected papers published in: E. Ventola, C. Charles & M. Kaltenbacher (2004), Perspectives in Multimodality. Amsterdam: Benjamins). She is a member of the advisory board of two leading journals in multimodality and text analysis: Visual Communication (Sage) and Text (Mouton de Gruyter) .
She has participated in international congresses over 40 times as plenary speaker and has given over 200 talks at conferences and at universities as a guest lecturer/workshop leader. She has also organized many seminars and over 15 international conferences. Her recent presentations on multimodality include: 2005 – ‘Globalisation vs. Localisation & Multimodal Marketing & Advertising’ [with Anna Hopearuoho], 35th GAL 2004 (German Applied Linguistics, Gesellschaft für Angewandte Linguistik), Koblenz, Germany, Sept. 22-24, 2005 (section paper); 2005- ‘Exploring field and ideational metafunction (and beyond towards multimodality) in Service Encounter (and other) learning materials, The 17th European Systemic-Functional Linguistics Conference & Workshop, 1-4.8, 2005, King's College London, UK(section paper); 2005 – ‘Tourism and Multimodal Marketing’, International Congress on Multimodality, Towards Multimodal Corpus Linguistics, Dept. of Languages and Literature, University of Pavia, Italy, June 2-4, 2005 (invited plenary speaker); 2005- ‘New challenges for English Language Teaching Materials and the Classroom’, BALEAP Conference, 15-17.4.2005, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK – (invited plenary paper); 2005 – ‘Issues on Multisemiotics & Discourse’, A Workshop on Multisemiotics, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina, 20.5,2005. (invited guest speaker); 2004- ‘Multimodality and Document Design’ (together with M. Kaltenbacher). Document Design Conference, Tilburg, Holland, 22-24.1.04 (section paper); 2004 - ‘Multimodal Systemiotics – Perspectives on design & discourses & the classroom’, The 2nd International Conference on Multimodality – Text, Culture & Use, Kristiansand, Norway, 14-15.5..2004 (invited plenary paper); 2004 – ‘Multimodality, Multimediality and Multiliteracies – A New Era for the Press and Using the Press’, Colloquium – Contrasting Text Types, Helsinki, Finland, 21-22.5.2004 (invited plenary paper); 2004 – ‘Globalization, the Media & the Internet – Systemic-Functional Challenges for English Language Teaching & Materials and the Classroom’, The 31st International Systemic-Functional Linguistics Congress. Kyoto, Japan, 30.8-4.9.2004 (invited plenary paper); 2004 - ‘New Dimensions of Discourse Analysis’, Verbal – Österreichische Linguisten Tagung, Salzburg, Austria, 12-14.11.2004 (section paper); 2002 - ‘Multi-modality and multi-mediality in academic contexts’‚ the 1st Symposium on Multi-modal Discourse, January 25-26, 2002, University of Salzburg, Austria (plenary paper – initiator of the conference series); 2002 - ‘Multimodality in operation – Text and Picture in a Museum’ (together with Andrea Hofinger)‚ The 29th Systemic Functional Congress July 15-19. 2002, Liverpool, Great Britain (section paper); 2002 - ‘Selling Mozart in Salzburg’, Constructing image and ideology in mass media discourse, August 22-24, 2002, Aalborg, Denmark (section paper); 2001 -‘ Multimodality & New Media & Applied Linguistics – Researching and practising New discourse literacies, also Interculturally’, 32nd Conference of Gesellschaft für Angelwandte Linguistik (GAL), Passau, Germany, September 28-29.9, 2001. (section paper & section co-organiser for ‘Kontrastive Linguistik und Interkulturelle Kommunikation’); 2001 -‘Linguistik und Tourismus’, Europäisches Jahr der Sprachen - Aktionswoche der Universität Salzburg, 7.–12.5.2001, Salzburg (invited paper).
Recent publications: Her most recent articles on multimodality include: Ventola, E. (in press) 'Selling Mozart in Salzburg’ (Aalborg conference volume, to be published in 2006); Ventola, E. (2005). Multimodality, multimediality and multiliteracies - A new era for the press and using the press. In Lenk, Hartmut and Andrew Chesterman (eds). Pressesorten im Vergleich – Contrasting Text Types in the Press. Hildesheim/New York: Georg-Olms-Verlag. Ventola; E. (2004, with Andrea Hofinger) ‘Multi-modality in operation: Language and picture in a museum’, In E. Ventola, C. Charles & M. Kaltenbacher, Perspectives in Multimodality. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 193-209
