Brothers after arms - Balkan rappers as public intellectuals

This article analyzes how Serbian rapper Marčelo and Bosnian rappers Edo Maajka and Frenkie have - from their first steps in hip hop - tried to build a common understanding of post-war sentiments and diagnose new-born societies in the Balkans. I argue that Balkan hip hop is a form of cultural activism that mobilizes people for social change. Through their trans-national projects, lyrics and participation in the public sphere these rappers have become post-war public intellectuals who aim to provoke societal change and contribute to how these societies have moved on after a period of violent conflict. Although the impact of their rap lyricism is uncertain, I will discuss first, how these rap artists have grown as public intellectuals in post-war societies and second, how do they organize their hip hop activism in practice, and third, how does activism give meaning to their audience and to the rappers themselves. How did the hip hop culture sculpture their need to express their thoughts publicly and in what way their work can be seen as world-spanning creative activity?Peer reviewe

Musiikki rakentaa valtiota / Music and state construction

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Wunste- a graffiti writer

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Balkan youth after the conflict

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Sajsi Mc and the feminist empathy of rap poetrics

Sajsi MC and the feminist empathy in rap poeticsNon peer reviewe

Petturien vai patrioottien räppi? / Traitor or patriot rap?

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Towards bilingual expertise - evaluating translanguaging pedagogy in bilingual degrees at the university level

A great deal of effort has been made in recent years to promote multilingual values in academia and society. This was one reason why the University of Helsinki introduced the Bilingual Bachelor's programme (TvEx) in 2010 to guarantee a sufficient number of bilingual professionals in Finnish society. The aim of this study is to explore students' reflections on the (learning) challenges they face in becoming bilingual experts. The data consist of lecture observations and 13 semi-structured retrospective interviews with 14 students conducted during 2018-2019. The results show that emerging bilingual students need to build a sense of belonging with both language groups in order to develop bilingual expertise. From the students' point of view, teaching is experienced as satisfactory in terms of both language and content learning, especially in smaller teaching groups in which students feel safe to ask questions and where they are given individual support. It thus seems that learning in terms of both language and disciplinary content could be improved if teachers were to raise language awareness by explicitly addressing the language agenda of the class at the beginning of each course. They could, for example, initiate a discussion on the language situation(s) in the classroom in order to negotiate a functional set of teaching practices that would suit all students present in the class. Our findings also imply that teachers need to develop more student-centred approaches through which they can help their students to deepen content knowledge and to improve language skills.Peer reviewe