Smart Communication Team

We are an international team with different academic backgrounds working
at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Oulu in Finland.

Florence Oloff

Principal Investigator

I am currently holding a position as Professor for “German Linguistics and Multimodal Interaction” and working at the Leibniz-Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, Germany. I am also an Affiliated Researcher at the Research Unit of Languages and Literature/Faculty of Humanities of the University of Oulu. As a trained linguist and expert in conversation analysis, I am interested in language use and communication in various settings and languages (e.g. German, French or Czech). Within the Smart Communication project, I am focusing on basic social practices involving smartphones and other mundane technologies.

Email: florence.oloff(at)oulu.fi
More information about my research here Old researcher profile @Uni Oulu
Follow me on Twitter: @olofflo

Iuliia Avgustis

Doctoral Researcher

I received my Masters’s degree in Sociology at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Russia (at a program in collaboration with the University of Manchester, UK) in 2017. I am currently writing my PhD thesis on smartphone use by young adults in Russia. I am also interested in interaction with artificial agents and in video games.

Email: iuliia.avgustis(at)oulu.fi
More information about my research here
Follow me on Twitter: @iuliiaavgustis

Samira Ibnelkaïd

Postdoctoral Researcher

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher currently working on the Smart Communication Project. I received my doctoral degree from the University of Lyon (France) and my qualifications in “Linguistics”, “Information and Communication Sciences” and “Epistemology, History and Philosophy of Sciences and Technics” from the French National Board of Universities (CNU). Within the SC project, I am focusing on the use of mobile technologies for video calling in between participants of various generations and ethnicities, in mundane settings.

Email: samira.ibnelkaid(at)oulu.fi
More information about my research here
Follow me on Twitter: @samiraibnelkaid

Hana Kalábová

Research Assistant (former team member)

I study General linguistics and Finnish philology in Prague and right now I am in the process of finishing my master’s thesis. I spent one year of my master’s studies as an exchange student at the University of Oulu, where I took courses of Inari Sami. I find the cross-linguistic approach of this project very useful to get to know more about human communication, because in Czech we have the proverb “You are human as many times as the number of languages you speak”.

Joonas Råman

Postdoctoral Researcher, Lecturer at Centria University of Applied Sciences

I obtained my doctoral degree in English Philology in 2019 at the University of Oulu. My prior research has, among others, focused on the embodied practices of teaching and learning Budo sports. In my current position as post-doctoral researcher in the Smart Communication Project, I am examining the use of mobile devices as physical objects in demonstrations among elderly users in Finland.

Email me: joonas.raman(at)oulu.fi
More information about my research here.

Alexandra Viol

Research Assistant (former team member)

I have received my Bachelor’s Degree in Information and Communication Management from Neisse University in 2017 and am now an Undergraduate student at the Faculty of Education at the University of Oulu. I study Intercultural Teacher Education with minors in German and French Philology at the Faculty of Humanities. Working as a research assistant in the Smart Communication Project gives me an opportunity to gain valuable experience for my own future educational research.

Do you need more information about the project and the team?

Get in touch