What is your workplace and job title?

I work as a specialist consultant at TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research at Aarhus University. The main aim of the research centre is to develop, evaluate and implement interventions that have a positive impact on children’s development such as language acquisition and other cognitive competences. The research centre collaborates with a number of different organisations, municipalities, and ministries. I’ve previously worked as a language consultant for seven years in a municipality, where I collaborated with researchers and consultants at the research centre to implement evidence-based interventions in daycare institutions.
 

What are two or three examples of daily tasks?

I am the project leader and daily manager of a partnership between the research centre and a number of Danish municipalities. The aim of the partnership is to implement an intervention in day cares that already has been evaluated in three large RCT-studies that all showed very positive effects on children’s language and socio-emotional competences. My role is to support the municipalities’ implementation of the intervention, which implies general project management and teaching different professional development courses for leaders and staff in day cares.

I’m also involved in the development of a new language test that will soon be obligatory for all 0-graders in Danish schools. This project requires tasks such a conducting norm-studies, finding the right test items and developing materials that will improve teachers ability to support children with a delayed language development.  
 

What are the two or three main things you got from linguistics?

Since many of my roles and tasks requires specialised knowledge about child development and language acquisition, I have benefitted a lot from the courses at Linguistics that are related to this content. Especially courses related to language development, cognition and neurolinguistic have provided me with a solid basis for further specialisation. And as an employee at a research centre I have gained a lot from the knowledge about different research methods from my time at Linguistics such as RCTs, matching and literature reviews.