Vesna Mikolič, PhD

VESNA MIKOLIČ, PhD, Principal Research Associate

Phone.: +386 5 663 77 00

Research Areas:

Linguistics
Semantics
Intercultural pragmatics
Literary pragmatics

Biography:

Vesna Mikolič graduated in 1989 in Slovene language and literature and Italian language and literature from the Faculty of Arts, University in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In 2001, she received her master’s degree in Slovene language and stylistics (course on sociolinguistics) and in 2004 she obtained her doctorate degree in linguistics from the Faculty of Arts, University in Ljubljana, Slovenia (PhD dissertation “Language as a Reflection of Ethnic Awareness in the Ethnically Mixed Area of Slovene Istria”).

She is employed full time at the Science and Research Centre Koper (ZRS Koper), where she heads the Institute for Linguistic Studies. She is a member of Scientific Council and the Election Commission of ZRS Koper, and of the Editorial Board of the publishing house Annales ZRS.

After having taught Slovene and Italian at the Secondary School of Economics and Social Sciences in Koper (1988-1990) and at the Koper Grammar School (1990-1993) for several years, she spent a few years working as editor and manager of the Italian desk at the Založba Lipa publishing house (1993-1995), and as independent organiser of cultural events at the Association of Cultural Organisations in Koper (1995-1997). In 1997, she was employed by ZRS Koper. She participated in the foundation of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Primorska (UP FHŠ), where she established the Slovenian Studies Programme and was the first head of the Slovenian Studies Department. From 2004 to 2012 she was the Dean of the Faculty. She was also a member of the UP Senate and the UP FHŠ Senate.

She has lectured at several foreign universities (Rijeka and Zagreb – HR, Kelowna – CAN, Bielsko Biala – PL, Tokyo – JAP, Sarajevo – BiH, Moscow – RUS, Novi Sad – Serbia, Trieste, Bologna – IT, Graz, Klagenfurt – AT, Seattle – USA). Since 2016 he has also been lecturing regularly at the Department of Slovenian Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Trieste.

Vesna Mikolič is the author of more than 500 bibliographic units, including numerous scientific articles in indexed journals, chapters in scientific monographs and monographs with national and international scientific publishers. She is the author of the following scientific monographs, among others:

Jezik v zrcalu kultur (Koper, Annales Scientific Publishing House, 2004),
Ethnic Identity and Intercultural Awareness in Modern Language Teaching: Tilka Model for Ethnic Conflicts Avoidance (New York, Nova Science Publishers, 2016),
Govor turizma (Koper, Annales Scientific Publishing House, 2015) and
Izrazi moči slovenskega jezika (Koper, Annales Scientific Publishing House, Ljubljana, Slovenska matica, 2020),

Editor and co-author of the e-dictionary of tourist terminology TURS and tourist corpus TURK and editor of the Bosnian-Slovenian dictionary (Sarajevo, Ljubljana). She has independently or collaboratively compiled and edited several monographs and proceedings, most recently Language and Culture in the Intercultural World with Cambridge Scholars Publishing. She is also an essayist and publicist, publishing her essays, columns, and commentaries in newspapers (Primorske novice, Delo) and magazines (Sodobnost, Fontana, Mladika, Dialogi, Primorska srečanja).

In 1990 she received the Prešeren Student Award from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.
During her postgraduate studies, she received two scholarships: in 1998, a one-year scholarship from the University of Trieste (IT) for research National Consciousness and Communicative Competence in a Multicultural Society, and
in 1999, a scholarship to conduct the Slovenian-Canadian University Connection project at Okanagan University College (Kelowna, BC, Canada).
In 2011, she received the University of Primorska Award for Scientific Excellence.
In 2017, she received the ZRS Koper award for scientific excellence “Glasnik znanosti”.
In 2017, she was among the five nominees for the best essay in the literary magazine Sodobnost.

Research activity:

She is involved in research work as head of the research program »Slovenhood Dimensions between Local and Global at the Beginning of the Third Millennium« (2019–2024, P5-0409) and leader or member of several national and international research projects, namely she was or is:

– Leader of applied and basic ARRS research projects:

a) Multilingual corpus of tourist texts – source of information and analytical basis of Slovenian natural and cultural heritage; basic research project, 2005-2008, J6-7273.

b) Dictionary of tourism terminology, applied research project, 2008-2011, L6-0245.

c) Slovenian national identity in light of tourism discourse, basic research project, 2013-2016, J6-5560.

– Leader of European Commission and EU Fund projects:

a) Young people in an intercultural situation, Phare CBC Slovenia/Italy 2003, 2007-2008.
b) PEACE from mill to mill, LAG of Istria, Program of the Republic of Slovenia and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), 2019-2021.

– Leader of bilateral projects:

a) Russian and Slovenian humanistic links in the field of contemporary Slavic studies, bilateral project Slovenia-Russia, 2006-2007. Cooperation of UP ZRS with the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University Lomonosov, project leaders: Dr. Vesna Mikolič and Dr. Marina Remnjova.

b) Methodological approaches to multicultural spaces. The case of Vojvodina and Istria, bilateral project Slovenia-Serbia, 2010-2012. Cooperation of UP ZRS with the Faculty of Arts in Novi Sad, project leaders: Dr. Vesna Mikolič and Dr. Liljana Subotic.

c) Interlinguistic and intercultural contacts and the construction of national identity in Slovenian and Croatian tourism discourse, bilateral project Slovenia-Croatia, 2010-2011. Cooperation of UP ZRS with the Faculty of Arts, University of Zagreb, Croatia, project leaders: Dr. Vesna Mikolič and Dr. Vesna Muhvic Dimanovski.

č) Ecological Discourse of Slovenian-American Intercultural Literature, Bilateral Project Slovenia-USA, 2015-2016. Cooperation of ZRS Koper with the University of Washington in Seattle; project leaders: dr. Vesna Mikolič and dr. Nives Dolšak.

d) Linguistic and cultural identity of students in relation to their language of instruction in Croatia and Slovenia, bilateral project Slovenia-Croatia, 2016-2017. Cooperation of ZRS Koper with the Faculty of Education, University of Zagreb, Croatia; project leaders: dr. Vesna Mikolič and dr. Tamara Turza Bogdan.

e) Lithuania and Slovenia and the Lithuanian and Slovenian languages in the field of international relations, bilateral project Slovenia-Lithuania, 2021-2022. Cooperation of ZRS Koper with the Faculty of Education, Vilnius University, Lithuania; project leaders: Dr. Vesna Mikolič and Dr. Jelena Konickaja.

– collaborator of international projects:

a) LANGUAGE – LINGUA – Multilingualism as a wealth and value of the Slovenian-Italian cross-border area (INTERREG Slovenia / Italy Cross-border Cooperation Program).

b) EUNoM – European College Network for Multilingualism (LLP Languages KA2).

c) Languages count – JeŠT (program of the European Social Fund of the EU and MIZŠ).

d) We are only with others (program of the European Social Fund of the EU and MIZŠ).

She is a member of the editorial board of several international scientific journals: Annales: Annals of Istrian and Mediterranean Studies (Koper), Scientific Journal of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and Literature Colloquium (Klagenfurt) and Croatian Journal of Education (Zagreb). She is co-editor of the collection of scholarly monographs Dimensions of Sloveneness, published jointly by Annales ZRS and Slovenska matica, and of the book collection Pont, published jointly by Beletrina and Annales ZRS.

At Slovenska matica she is a member of the board and the publishing department, head of the Slovene language department and editor of the collection of reprints of Cankar’s works. She is a member of the Slovenian PEN Center and the Women’s Committee of SC PEN Mira. She is president of the Slavic Society of Koper and vice-president of the Society for Applied Linguistics.

She is or was head or member of programme and organising committees for international scientific meetings (head of the biennial scientific meetings Slovenian Language in Contact, head of the international conference for the opening of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue “Intercultural Dialogue as a Fundamental Value of the EU”, member of the committee for the conference “Slovenian Dialects in Contact”, member of the committee of the 23rd Slovenian Slavic Congress “Slavic Studies in the Regions – Koper”, member of the programme committee of the conferences “Obdobja” Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, “Contexts” Faculty of Arts, University of Novi Sad …).

She heads the Expert Council of the Golden Stone, an initiative to promote the development of good governance at the municipal level.

She is also or she has been a member of various expert commissions and associations at home and abroad: The Jury of SC PEN Mira for the selection of prize winners, the Expert Commission for Books at the Ministry of Culture and Reading Culture at JAK, the Council JAK, the Program Committee of RTV Slovenia for the Italian National Program, the Group of the Office for Slovenes Abroad for the evaluation of diploma, master and doctoral theses on Slovenes abroad, the Slavic Society of Slovenia, the Historical Society of South Primorska, IPrA – International Pragmatics Association, ASEEES – Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

In 1994 she conceived the project Summer Slovenian Language Courses on the Slovenian Coast “Hello, here is the Slovenian Mediterranean!”, which the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska and the Scientific Research Center Koper traditionally organize every year and in which she still participates.