Added value from area expertise

Are you planning to do your master's at a Finnish university? Would you like to specialise in Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe? A multidisciplinary network for master's students opens new opportunities to build and develop your expertise.

The Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki coordinates a network of 12 Finnish universities, ExpREES: We offer a multidisciplinary, Master's level programme suitable for students of various disciplines from the humanities and social sciences to business and technology. These studies will give you skills and competencies which will be regarded as an advantage when pursuing different positions in the academia, public administration, or business life. Contact teaching, online courses, summer schools and excursions help you in finding your strengths and developing your career, not to mention completing your Master's thesis!

Nationwide education since 1998

The uniqueness of ExpREES lies in its nationwide network, flexibility and multidisciplinarity. ExpREES studies are available for students from a wide variety of academic disciplines, as long as you are enrolled as a Master's student in any of the twelve universities in the network (see How to apply). ExpREES is also exceptional thanks to its historical perspective: the programme has been running since 1998 (first as the Master's School in Russian and East European Studies). Its teaching, organisation and activities have been developed systematically, based on the feedback from students and teachers for more than twenty years. To date, over 600 students have graduated from the programme and the alumni can be found working as specialists both on private and public sectors all the way to ministers and high officials.

Expertise in Russian and Eastern European Studies (ExpREES) differs from degree programmes in that

  • ExpREES studies are part of the student’s Master’s degree in one of the network universities.
  • Students are enrolled to their home universities while carrying out ExpREES studies. ExpREES studies include both compulsory (15 cr) and optional (minimum of 10 cr) courses on Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe provided by the network universities. As an ExpREES student you can choose the most interesting and relevant optional courses for your own degree. Please note that the three compulsory courses are given in Finnish. If your Finnish for academic purposes is not yet at such a level that you can take these courses,  we will find other suitable courses to compensate these three - so no worries! 
  • Student’s master’s thesis (30-40 cr) has to be related to Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe. The main supervisor comes from student's own field of study in her/his home university. In addition, ExpREES offers multidisciplinary Master's thesis seminars for ExpREES students. These seminars are designed to complement seminars in student's own field of study offered by their home university.
  • Students graduate from their home university, so the degree is awarded by one of the network universities. As an ExpREES student you will get an additional certificate for completing the ExpREES programme.

The ExpREES is coordinated by the Aleksanteri Institute, Finnish Centre for Russian and Eastern European Studies, at the University of Helsinki.