Introducing: Tuomo Lahdelma

Professor Tuomo Lahdelma
Pécsi Tudományegyetem

I have done work over the past two years with BK 21 -- which stands for "Brain Korea Twenty-First Century," a governmental program offering grants to universities to assist graduate students in developing scholarly skills -- and a few days ago, BK 21 asked me if I could introduce the Finnish scholar shown above, Professor Tuomo Lahdelma, at a talk he was scheduled to give. I said yes, and that talk took place yesterday. I therefore had to find out a bit about him, which proved to be quite simple since the kind BK 21 folk sent along his CV. Although the image above shows Professor Lahdelma lecturing in Hungary, he holds a professorship in Finland, at the University of Jyväskylä. Here is what I said in presenting the man:

Hello, I am Professor Hodges, and I have been asked to offer a few words by way of introduction.

Finland is well known to Koreans as a country whose native language is one of Europe's few non-Indo-European tongues and whose high school students rank even higher on the PISA test than Korean high school students themselves do!

Today, we are graced by the presence of Professor Tuomo Lahdelma, a professor at the University of Jyväskylä, in Finland. He is also the president of the International Association for Hungarian Studies.

Professor Lahdelma has an MA in Finnish Language and World Literature and three degrees in Hungarian Language and Literature: a Licentiate of Arts, a Doctor of Philosophy, and a Docent of Hungarian Literature.

Professor Lahdelma has been a visiting professor on a DAAD Fellowship in Germany at the University of Hamburg and a visiting Socrates Lecturer at several European universities.

Moreover, Professor Lahdelma has been the recipient of several honors and awards, including a János Lotz Medal, a Pro Cultura Hungarica award, and a Balassi Sword Literary Prize, and he is a Knight, First Class, of the Order of the Lion of Finland and a Commander, First Class, of the Hungarian Order of Merit.

I am honored to invite Professor Lahdelma to the podium, and I know that you will give him your full attention, for he will surely have words of knowledge and wisdom to impart.

Professor Tuomo Lahdelma . . .

Those were my words of introduction, the first time that I've done this since I was an undergraduate student in Baylor University's Honors Program, when I had to introduce a speaker at one of the Honors Program's special seminars.

I think that I handled this more recent one a bit more professionally . . .