1983-1990: Task-based learning: She led a large-scale project which resulted in localised materials for the teaching of English to Greek pupils in state schools (1983-87), introducing a task-based language learning approach in practice and making innovative use of learners’ first language.

1992-2012: Language and ideology in EFL texts: She began investigating the ideological meanings in EFL textbooks, syllabuses and educational materials for the teaching of languages. She continued this line of critically analysing ideologies articulated in texts for language teaching and testing and one of the several projects she conducted resulted in a PhD thesis by A. Balourdi (2012). World representations in language exam batteries: critical discourse analysis of texts used to test reading comprehension (view it online).

2000-2010: Critical discourse analysis: Becoming increasingly interested in the critical discourse analysis of materials, language policies and policy documents as well as the discursive practices of different social institutions, she investigated dominant discursive practices of monolingualism in EFL, of gender inequality and bureaucracy. Critical language study continued to be at the centre of her research interests as she became more involved in investigating discourses of multi-/pluri- and monoligual literacies, the ideological nature of FL pedagogy and gendered practices in academia.

2003-2008: Academic curriculum reform: Upon securing funding form the ESF and the Greek state (280.630 euros), she directed the PEDYAS project on the basis of which the Department reformed its undergraduate curriculum, developed and equipped a Centre for Self-Access Learning and Materials, secured a new website (portal) for the Department and the supported the launch of the “Synthesis” e-journal for literary theory. Upon completion, the project received excellent reviews by its three international external evaluators.

2003-2009: Gender studies: Scientific director, in collaboration with Prof. Stella Vosniadou, of a pioneering project on the basis of which an interdepartmental gender studies programme was developed and gender related courses were introduced in the undergraduate curricula of eleven departments of the NKUA, including Medicine, Law, Theology, Social Sciences and Humanities. The project, with the Greek acronym THEFYLIS, allowed us to organise public lectures with prominent speakers from Greece and abroad, to create conditions so as to openly discuss gender bias in Greek academia, to publish gender related books and reports, and the first gender studies of Wikipedia in Greek. This project was the basis for the NKUA’s gender policy and the Gender Equality Centre. From 2005-2007 she supervised an EU funded project to investigate the gender related meanings articulated by mainly female academics when talking about their career choices.

2010-2014: English for Young Learners: Having secured substantial ESF co-funding (4.730.000€) through the operational programme entitled “Education and Lifelong Learning”, she directed a multifaceted research project which officially introduced the first foreign language from the year one of primary school. It involved the development of context sensitive courses for the teaching and learning of English for young learners in the first, second and third grades. Action research led to the formation of original curricula and syllabuses especially for young learners, to localised instructional materials that were especially designed and produced and to e-courses for the professional development of EFL teachers who taught young learners for the first time. Findings of the research carried out are included in a volume published by the RCeL in 2014.

2010-2015: Multilingualism and curriculum development: Directed a national project which involved 25 language teaching professionals for the design and development of the Integrated Foreign Languages Curriculum (IFLC) which was adopted in 2016 as the national curriculum for foreign languages in compulsory education. The illustrative descriptors of leveled communicative competence of the IFLC was aligned to the CEFR. In collaboration with Dr V. Gotsoulia and with the assistance of a group of young scholars she created a multilingual database, designed as the essential methodological apparatus for specifying benchmarks of language proficiency, and for furnishing comparable descriptions of levelled communicative performance across the foreign languages taught in Greek state schools.

2002-2022: Glocal language testing: Moved from mere critique into social action and became involved with the development of a ‘glocal’ multilingual exam suite for people living, working and studying in Greece, and since then she has been carrying out multifaceted research in testing and assessment.  

From 2003 to 2006 she was responsible for numerous actions related to the development of the examination and certification system, to the formation of laws and regulations regarding the system as a whole, exam delivery and administration, the examination and script rating centres. She also collaborated with teams of experts for the preparation of test papers (developing content, structure, design and the items themselves), for piloting the test papers and analysing the results for test validity, reliability and stability, and for final formatting, checking and rechecking possible changes. In this context, she worked with a team of young scholars, supervising research on testing issues such as: the effect of text and reader variables on reading comprehension, the role of the examiner in oral testing, test-taking strategies in the KPG exams and cross linguistic mediation. Also, she coordinated projects related to the validity of the test tasks, assessment and marking reliability, In the next 10 years she managed actions offering numerous services to the foreign language teaching community in Greece and beyond, offered e-infrastructures including e-repositories to store and manage large quantities of data, and to easily retrieve organised information, original data bases for item analysis and for retrieving linguistic information concerning tests.

In 2007, she secured funding from the ESF and the Greek state (3.425.400€) she directed a project at the NKUA, which was the cornerstone of the development of the KPG multilingual suite. By the end of 2008, the team had generated: (a) validated levelled descriptors aligned to the CEFR, (b) detailed specifications and guidelines across languages for the papers testing different levels of different language competences; (c) levelled assessment criteria, (d) the KPG scoring system, (d) specifications for the script-rating centres, (e) specifications and materials for examiner and script-rater training programmes.

From 2008 to 2016 she coordinated research having to do with cross-linguistic mediation resulting in publications by young scholars whom she supervised, resulting in PhD theses, completed with honours. Among them are the following (view them online):

• Liontou, Trisevgeni. (2013). The effect of text and reader variables on reading comprehension: the case of the Greek State Certificate of English Language Proficiency Exams (KPG) - A New Text Difficulty Index for Automatic Text Classification.
• Stathopoulou, Maria. (2013). Task dependent interlinguistic mediation performance as translanguaging practice: The use to KPG data for an empirically based study.
• Oikonomidou, Vassiliki (2016). Factors affecting read-to-write task difficulty.
• Karatza, Stella (2017). Analysing multimodal texts and test tasks for reading comprehension in the KPG exams in English.

From 2011-2014, in collaboration with Dr Voula Gotsoulia, built the KPG English Corpus to determine the linguistic 'profile' of the Greek learner of foreign languages included in the school curriculum. It comprises the essential research basis to inform, on an ongoing basis, the IFLC and support the development of novel teaching materials tailored to the needs of Greek learners. The Corpus, which totals to 3.8 million words, comprises collections of written texts (scripts) produced by candidates in the KPG examinations in English. The script collections have been systematized in a Script Database to be enriched on an ongoing basis, maintaining a balance across proficiency levels, types of tasks which candidates are asked to perform as well as communicative environments to which they are asked to respond using the target language

From 2010 to 2015, having secured substantial ESF co-funding (4.293.000€) through the operational programme entitled Education and Lifelong Learning, she directed a project with a view to developing the KPG examination suite to full maturity and to build a fully automated platform with custom-related application systems for the e-KPG. The project was implemented by the NKUA in partnership with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and in collaboration with the Computer Technology Institute of the University of Patras. An electronic platform for computer adaptive testing in all KPG languages developed, as well as a distance training programme for KPG evaluators and with an e-school to prepare stake holders for the exams without fees.

2020-2022: Multilingualism, language policies and academia. As Director of the scientific committee of the Centre of Excellence for Multilingualism and Language Policy, she has been coordinating six research projects carried out by teams of scholars related to:

• Multilingual university students and graduates and their attitudes to Greek and other languages
• Heritage languages in Greek community schools
• Dominant language constellations of university students and language awareness
• Greek language studies in the diaspora

In the context of the work done by the CURUM of the ECSPM, she is coordinating a project on researching mono- and multilingualism in European universities.