Admissions to Doctoral Studies

The target degree available within the programme is:

• Doctor of Laws (Faculty of Law)

The right to complete a Doctor of Laws degree can be granted to applicants who have completed a Master’s or Licentiate degree in law in Finland or abroad, and who are deemed to have sufficient knowledge and skills to complete the doctoral degree and submit a high-quality research plan for a dissertation.

The right to study can also be granted based on a Master’s degree in another discipline, provided that the applicant is deemed sufficiently competent to pursue postgraduate studies in law.

You must have a preliminary written consent from at least one supervisor who is in a permanent or long-term employment at the faculty of law at the University of Helsinki.

Applicants are personally responsible for finding supervisors. Applicants must contact the discipline relevant to their research interests in good time before submitting an application to discuss preliminary research plan and the supervision arrangements for doctoral research. To progress to the academic assessment stage, an eligible applicant must, by the application deadline, secure at least one supervisor who holds a doctoral degree and a permanent or long-term employment contract with the Faculty of Law, and has provisionally agreed to act as the supervisor. Doctoral researchers should have two supervisors who hold a doctoral degree.

To support decision-making, the doctoral program will request a written statement from the supervisor or supervisors named in the application after the application period has ended, including an assessment of the applicant’s skills and knowledge for completing a doctorate and the feasibility of their research plan. When admitting applicants to doctoral education, the Faculty must ensure that they have access to high-quality supervision and support in the field of their thesis.  As a rule, one supervisor may not concurrently supervise more than 12 full-time doctoral researchers pursuing a doctoral degree. A supervisor’s recommendation does not bind the doctoral programme in deciding on admissions. If the supervisor has too many supervisees, this may constitute grounds for rejecting an application. 

When assessing the skills and knowledge of applicants for completing a doctoral degree, attention is paid to the quality and feasibility of their research plan, as well as its suitability for the research field, their academic performance in prior degrees, specifically the quality and grade of their thesis, awards, publications, experience supporting their intended research. When assessing applicants’ prior academic performance, all relevant studies and theses are taken into account. When assessing the quality of applicants’ research plan, attention is paid to their scholarly significance, feasibility and connection to the Faculty’s research. The high standard and suitability of the research plan for the field, as well as the feasibility of the research plan, have been given increased weight, so that previous academic success and other achievements cannot compensate for shortcomings related to the research plan and its feasibility.

Applicants already pursuing postgraduate studies elsewhere are advised to present in their application scholarly grounds for also pursuing postgraduate studies at the University of Helsinki. Applicants holding a doctorate in another field are also recommended to provide scholarly grounds for admission as a new postgraduate student.