Nils Jaekel

Nils joined the University of Oulu in August 2021 after six years at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, USA. He received his teaching degree for English, Social Studies, and German as a Foreign Language/Intercultural Pedagogy (2008/2009) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and Dr. phil. in applied linguistics and language pedagogy (2015) from the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. In August of 2023, Nils started a position as Associate Professor in English Foreign Language Acquisition and Language Pedagogy at the University of Copenhagen. He continues to be part of the Faculty of Education with his Academy of Finland-funded research project, Linguistic distance, language learning, and educational attainment: investigating multilingual students’ attainment in Finland and Germany (2023-2027) (link).

Nils’ main research interests are foreign and second language learning with particular emphasis on early foreign language learning, content and language integrated learning, multilingualism in education, and the self-efficacy of language teachers and learners. His long-term goal is to support the continuous development of language education through rigorous, evidence-based research that identifies universal and context-specific factors in language teaching. Nils’ research has received international recognition for his article From Early Starters to Late Finishers? A Longitudinal Study of Early Foreign Language Learning in School, the Outstanding Article of the Year Award from the journal Language Learning in 2017, and the annual Research Article Award by the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 2019.