Previous symposia

VAKKI ry has arranged the annual VAKKI Symposium since 1980. Below is a list of the previous symposia from the year 2000 onwards, and some information of the most recent ones.

2023: “Communicating with Purpose”

XLIII International VAKKI Symposium
February 9–10, 2023 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Oana Brindusa Albu (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark)
Managing visibilities through communication: The shades and shadows of activism in repressive contexts

Anastasia Kavada (University of Westminster, UK)
Communicating (with) care: Vulnerability and communication for social change

2022: “Responsible Communication”

XLII International VAKKI Symposium
February 10–11, 2022 in Zoom

Keynote speakers:

Martin Hultman (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)
Three decades of obstruction. How to analyze, understand and change communication patterns to avoid being stuck in the knowledge-action gap of climate change?

Nina Janich (Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany)
Science Communication under the Condition of Uncertainty from the Perspective of Applied Linguistics

2021: “Workplace Communication IV”

XLI International VAKKI Symposium
February 11–12, 2021 in Zoom

Keynote speakers:

Emma Christensen (Roskilde University) and Lars Thøger Christensen (Copenhagen Business School)
Examining the (Re)presentational Voice

Samantha Warren (University of Portsmouth)
Using Instagram in a participant-led field study: Reflections on the politics of organizational communication and identity

2020: “Workplace Communication III”

XL International VAKKI Symposium
February 6–7, 2020 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Crispin Thurlow (University of Bern, Switzerland)
The (Grubby) Business of Words: What ‘George Clooney’ Tells Us

Dorien van de Mieroop (University of Leuven, Belgium)
Exploring narrative dimensions: The case of stories told in institutional contexts

2019: “Workplace Communication II”

XXXIX International VAKKI Symposium
February 7–8, 2019 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Cornelius Puschmann (Hans Bredow Institute for Media Research, Hamburg, Germany)
The Enron email dataset as a window into workplace communication

Andrea Whittle (Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom)
Consequential categories: How categories in interaction work to get work done

2018: “Workplace Communication”

XXXVIII International VAKKI Symposium
February 8–9, 2018 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Ruth Breeze (University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain)
You can be a great communicator! Self-help guides to workplace communication, and how to survive them

Wyke Stommel (Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
The use of metacommunication in online chat counselling: Three different strategies of responding to advice resistance

2017: “Voices”

XXXVII International VAKKI Symposium
February 9–10, 2017 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

David Giles (University of Winchester, UK)
Celebrities, audiences, fans: To what extent do social media dissolve the boundaries?

Mariá Ángeles Orts Llopis (Universidad de Murcia, Spain)
Legal English as the lingua franca of international law: an account of traits and pitfalls for Continental LSP practitioners and legal translators

2016: “Text and Textuality”

XXXVI International VAKKI Symposium
February 11–12, 2016 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Susanne Göpferich (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
From Literacy to Academic Multiliteracy: Educational Challenges, Empirical Findings and Didactical Implications

Leena Kuure (University of Oulu)
Texts, literacies or multimodal practices?

Else Mundal (University of Bergen)
Textuality and the oral-written continuum in the Middle Ages

2015: “Borders under Negotiation”

XXXV International VAKKI Symposium
February 12–13, 2015 in Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Jaakko Husa (University of Lapland)
Language of Law or Blind Men and an Elephant

Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo)
A philological paradigm? Philological invocations in the human sciences

Jens E. Olesen (University of Greifswald)
Working for an open border, common problems and possibilities: the case of the Danish-German border

2014: “Democracy”

XXXIV International VAKKI Symposium
February 13–14, 2014, Vaasa, Finland

Keynote speakers:

Mikko Lehtonen (University of Tampere):
Democracy, language, imagination

Tommi Lehtonen (University of Vaasa):
What is this thing called democracy?

2013: “Point of View as a Challenge”

2012: “Languages in Motion”

2011: “Language and Ethics”

2010: “XXX Jubilee Symposium: Language and Emotion”

2009: “Language and Power”

2008: “Language and Diversity”

2007: “Language and Lifestages”

2006: “Norms and normlessness”

2005: “XXV Jubilee Symposium”

2004: “LSP & Translation – A Multilingual Point of View”

2003: “Diachrony in Synchrony”

2002: “LSP and Translation – Focus on Teaching”

2001: “Understanding and Intelligibility”

2000: “Anniversary Symposium”