|
.... Lotta Weckström is
resident in Berkeley for three years, teaching Finnish
while Finnish language Lecturer Sirpa Tuomainen is on sabattical
for the first, to be followed by a post-Doc position with
the Department of Scandinavian. Born just north of Helsinki
in Järvenpää to
a Swedish-speaking Father and a Finnish-speaking mother,
Lotta has been bilingual since early childhood. Finland,
who belonged to the Swedish Empire for 800 years before a
short 100-year span during which it was passed to Tzarist
Russia, is still officially a bilingual country with a Swedish-speaking
minority. Swedes were formally likely to belong to the upper
class and, ironically, many of the most ardent and talented
Finnish nationalists at the turn of the century (such as
Sibelius, etc.) were of this Swedish-speaking ruling class.
Lotta cautions that while a bilingual country, most Finns
speak either Finnish or Swedish in home life, not both; a
mixed-language environment is quite a bit rarer.
After graduating from high school, Lotta spent a year on a farm in Germany, learned
German, and as a consequence of this expanding interest in Germany followed
that with studies in translation and linguistics. An undergraduate exchange in
Berlin led her back to Germany to complete her degree in Linguistics and Northern
European Studies at Humboldt University. She followed that with a Mastersat the
University of Turku, siturated in the formerly Swedish-speaking old Finnish capital
of Turku (or Åbo in Swedish), founded in the 13th
century.
Lotta’s husband, whom she met while studying, is from Israel, and she lives
with him now in Amsterdam. At the University of Amsterdam she received an additional
Master’s
in in Rhetoric and Analysis; there she has also taught and learned Dutch. Her
current PhD research from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, concerns
different ways of talking about matters associated with bilingualism and having
a Finnish background in Sweden (Finnish-Swedes comprise roughly 10% of that
somewhat larger and more populous country). With teaching experience in Finland,
the Netherlands, and now in the US, Lotta has had the linguistic challenge of
conducting the bulk of of her home, academic, and professional life at various
times in Finnish, Swedish, German, or English, depending on her locale.
Deniz Alkan was born to a Turkish father
studying in the FRG and a German mother, not two kilometers
from the French border in Saarbrücken,
in south-western Germany. His father belonged to the ideology
of the secular, Kemalist Turks, and had moved to German
to pursue studies in Engineering. Growing up with a German
mother and speaking only German in the home, Deniz noticed
no discrimination from classmates and culturally perceives
himself to be more German than Turkish. He did spend summers
with his fathers family in Turkey and learned the language
there through informal coursework, self-discipline, and
a summer intensive workshop at Bosphorus University
in Istanbul. French was the second language taught in school
given the towns proximity to the Gaullic border, and the
family did routine grocery shopping in France, as just
a small example of how interconnected the two cultures
were (even before border controls officially ended).
His undergraduate studies in Düsseldorf were in the political science
and sociology, which he has followed with a Master's in European Studies focusing
on political science and European political structures and European law from
the Free, Humboldt, and Technical Universities in Berlin. Deniz has worked
at high level political jobs at both the European Commission headquarters in
Brussels, as well as in the administration of the industrialized, more northerly
German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (which he likens to California due to
its large population, vibrant economy, and political clout). There he met his
girlfriend who hails from a Russian-immigrant family to Germany; as a consequence
he has begun to add Russian to the host of languages from differing language
groups (Germanic, Romance, Turkic, Slavic) he has mastered.
His studies and travels have afforded him travel and study
opportunities around Europe and in the US, and his Visiting
Scholar year here at Berkeley is sponsored by the ERP-Marshall
Program of the German Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung
des Deutschen Vokes).
These multicultural Visiting Scholars are emblematic of
the New Europe, where personal relationships, quixotic
travel, and trans-national economic and political integration
leave an indelible mark on one's personal life, place of
residence, and language of daily life. Though both thoroughly
European at heart, Lotta Weckström
and Deniz Alkan are welcome additions to the thoroughly American university of
Berkeley; IES is proud to share in hosting such talented, well-rounded scholars
in its support of a European Studies mission both at UC Berkeley and in the University
of California as a whole.
|
