Speakers

Marjo-Leea Alapuranen

works as a sign language interpreter at Via Sign Language Sector Cooperative. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in sign language interpreting and a Master’s degree in English language. In her master’s thesis she analysed interpretation between English and Finnish Sign Language from a multimodal and multilingual point of view.

 

 

 

Dr Hilde Haualand

is an associate professor at the Department of International studies and Interpreting at Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway, where she is co-chairing the research group Interpreting, Language and Communication. She is also a member of Diversity Studies Centre Oslo. Some of her publications are on sign language interpreters and professionalism, sign language interpreting services and the impact on service provisions, the politics of video interpreting, disability, identity and marginalization, deaf people and transnational connections and on sign language ideologies. She edited the book Tolking – språkarbeid og profesjonsutøvelse with Anna-Lena Nilsson and Eli Raanes in 2018.

 

 

Päivi Kluuskeri

is a Finnish Sign Language interpreter. She graduated first in 2005 with BA in Sing Language Interpreting and then in 2019 with MA, Master of Humanities in Eumasli program (European Master in Sign Language Interpreting). Her Master’s Thesis research title was Who Is My Voice Today? -  Deaf Professionals and Representation. She works as a community interpreter in the company Tulke Oy and is based in Turku, Finland. She has experience in various interpreting settings, but her interests lie in worklife interpreting and interpreting into spoken language.

 

 

Saija Kuronen

is a Finnish interpreter who works predominantly between Finnish and Finnish Sign Language. She has been a practitioner since 2006 and in 2019 she obtained a European Master in Sign Language Interpreting (EUMASLI) degree from the Humak University of Applied Sciences. Currently she works as an in-house interpreter and interpreter bookings coordinator in the Finnish Association of the Deaf, but she has experience from educational and community interpreting as well. Throughout her career she has been especially interested in reflecting and refining team interpreting practices.

 

 

Minttu Laine

has graduated as a sign language interpreter in 1994 and 2008. She now works at Jyväskylä University (Finland), with Finnish, Finnish Sign Language and English as her working languages. Her work consists of educational interpreting, workplace interpreting and conference interpreting. Minttu’s previous work experience includes community interpreting and other sign language related work. She holds an MA in applied linguistics (2016), and is currently in the early stages of her PhD studies on interaction in sign language interpreting.

 

 

 

Dr Anna-Lena Nilsson

is currently Professor of Signed Language and Interpreting at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. She has more than 35 years of experience as a signed language interpreter (Swedish Sign Language/Swedish/English), in a variety of national and international settings. Professor Nilsson has trained interpreters since 1994, and was part of the team planning the BA-program in Sign Language and Interpreting launched at Stockholm University in 2013. She is a member of the assessment panel for the WFD-WASLI International Sign Interpreter Accreditation, and was also part of the team setting up a national accreditation system for Swedish Sign Language/Swedish interpreters.

 

 

Dr. Päivi Rainò

is a General Linguist with a primary research focus on sign languages and deaf studies and interpreting between visual and auditive languages. From 2011 till 2017 and again since Sept. 2019 she has been working as Senior Researcher at Humak UAS/Interpreting & Linguistic Accessibility. Her research areas have included the needs for interpreter services among the hard-of-hearing youth with cochlear implant, learning outcomes in the syllabus of Finnish Sign Language in basic education and studies on demographics and accessibility among the deaf people in Albania (2015–2016). As of 2019 she has worked in the following projects: Future prospects of interpreting services and implications for sign language interpreter education (2019–2020); The quality of language services for the people using sign language (”Sign Language Barometer”, 2020); Speech-language intervention for young offenders with communication challenges (2020) and Historical injustices against deaf people in Finland (”Signed Lives”, 2020–2021).

 

Anu Savolainen

Anu comes from a bilingual family, she has a sign language background.
Starting in her teens, she has worked at camps for deaf and hard-of-hearing children, as well as on courses for the parents of deaf or HoH children.

Anu has a Master's Degree in Education, focusing on Special Education, as well as an MA, majoring in Finnish Sign language accomplished later on.

She has worked at the national Valteri Centre for Learning and Consulting since finishing her education degree. She has a position as a native sign language special educator at the Valteri school Onerva in Jyväskylä. Today, Anu focuses on teaching FinSL to school children all over Finland via distance education tools.

 

Dr Christopher Stone

WASLI President 2019-2023
Reader (Associate Professor) in Interpreting and Translation, University of Wolverhampton, UK
British Sign Language/American Sign Language/International Sign-English Interpreter

Christopher Stone has published and presented about Deaf interpreters, educational interpreting, interpreter aptitude (in the Journal of Translation & Interpreting, vol 9) and indexing multimodal resources in translated television news by deaf sight interpreters (in the 2019 Routledge Handbook on Translation and Pragmatics) and within situated learning environments with his colleague Thaïsa Hughes. His most recent edited volume with Lorraine Leeson Interpreting and the politics of recognition (2018) also covers many issues in relation to professional identity. His most recent publication, with Roy and Brunson, is The Academic Foundations of Interpreting Studies and Its Theories, 2018, Gallaudet University Press.

Christopher Stone’s interpreting practice is now primarily academic conference interpreting. He is an active member of AIIC, an accredited WFD-WASLI IS interpreter and maintains UK (NRCPD) and US (RID) certification. He has worked as an interpreter within community settings, broadcast meeting, etc. since 1997. He was the previous Chair of the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) UK and the vice-President of the European forum of sign language interpreters (efsli).

 

Elina Tapio

is the principal lecturer at the Humak University of Applied Sciences, Finland. She is doing ethnographic research on signed interaction with a particular interest in space, multimodality, and multilingualism within the framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis.

 

 

 

 

Ph.D Gun-Viol Vik

The principal lecturer in interpreting at Diaconia University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Gun-Viol has been training interpreters at university level (spoken languages) since the 1990s. She has several decades of experience as a conference interpreter interpreter, working in Scandinavian languages and Finnish. Her recent research relates to interpreter training and interpreting in bilingual organisations.

 

 

 

 

 

Virve Viljanen

Occupational Therapist (BSc) Finland, Psychiatry, Helsinki University and Helsinki University Hospital, Outpatient Clinic for Multicultural Psychiatry. Virve Viljanen is a sign language interpreter as her first vocation since 1995 and has done clinical work in her second profession for the past 7 years as a sign language skilled OT in Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic for Migrants, Refugees and Asylum seekers. The clientele also include deaf refugees and migrants. Part of her focus when working with e.g. deaf refugee clientele is to assess the occupational performance in language skills and possible mental health issues visible through the language.

 

 

Maarit Widberg-Palo

Master of Education, Master of Arts (major subject FinSL), sign language interpreter, Supervisor, Sign Language Sector Cooperative Via, native sign language user.
Maarit has a versatile job description at Via where she works as a training co-ordinator. She has a vast experience of interacting with people coming from different backgrounds and of working with people belonging to different age groups. Maarit has trained sign language interpreters in mental health interpreting, on encountering demanding clients and on how to interpret for immigrant people.