Prof. Marko Siitonen

University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Marko Siitonen is a professor of intercultural and digital communication at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He currently serves as the Head of the Department of Language and Communication Studies and teaches in the international MA programme in Language, Globalisation and Intercultural Communication.

He has served as the chair of the Finnish National Association for Game Studies, The Finnish Association of Communication and Social Interaction (Prologos), as well as the Digital Games Research section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).

His research examines how people use media and communication technologies across diverse contexts, including intercultural communication, media and news, digital games, and communication in working life. He is particularly interested in how communication technologies shape intercultural interaction and the construction of social categories such as nationality and ethnicity, and how intercultural communication can help facilitate productive interaction across such boundaries.

Between 2024–2026, he has led the University of Jyväskylä’s contribution to a three-university consortium funded by the Research Council of Finland, exploring the complex ripple effects and limitations of AI and human interaction in work, business and societal contexts.

In his keynote lecture, Marko Siitonen will talk about intercultural education and scholarship as agents of change, and the challenges related to dealing with systems that are slow to change or resist change altogether.