These are just a couple of examples. You can also take different elective studies and do your traineeship somewhere else than mentioned here and still end up working in jobs like these. In the Faculty of Arts, the minors usually direct you to certain jobs or fields more than your major does so you can study anything that interests you. For example, one of our students attended a course in law and wrote her bachelor’s thesis on legal linguistics. She also studied communications and a variety of interesting courses like rituals and religion. She plans on working abroad in the EU or in an embassy in the future. So, feel free to study anything that you feel might be useful for your plans!
An academic career is a fairly straightforward path for general linguistics students. Your studies in the LingDig programme will prepare you well for doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki or elsewhere. In fact, many of our alumni begin writing their doctoral theses shortly after completing their master's degree. Doctoral students usually teach in addition to conducting research and writing.
One possible path you can take within academia is to become a field linguist. Field linguists spend time within a speech community to record, interview, and collect materials from the language. Typically, a field linguist specialises in endangered languages, and their work directly helps preserve them. It is invaluable work aimed at reversing language loss by collecting data such as speech patterns, written texts, grammar rules, and cultural context. Once a language has been documented, it will never cease to exist entirely. Did you know, for example, that modern Hebrew was successfully revived from a language used only in religious contexts into a language of everyday use?
The University of Helsinki is a research-led university. This means that all of our teaching is rooted in active research. This approach guarantees that our teachers are at the cutting edge of their fields and are the best possible people to train future specialists. Perhaps you will be one of them?
Useful electives: language and culture studies, language technology, computer science, statistical methods
Career opportunities: post-graduate student, lecturer, researcher, field linguist
Trainee opportunities: Research assistant at the university, teaching assistant at our own courses.
Many linguists work either full-time or project-based as annotators. That means that they annotate texts using their linguistic knowledge of languages. For example, many startups, mobile apps, and other companies benefitting from annotated text are likely to hire linguists for this task.
Useful electives: language and culture studies, language technology
Opportunities: university’s trainee positions, IT companies, translating agencies, international and Finnish companies
"Generalist fields" refers to educational paths that do not train students for one specific profession. The term is often used in contrast to "specialist" fields, such as medicine. Many university programs educate generalists, and the LingDig programme is no exception. Being a "generalist" describes your educational background rather than a specific job title or daily routine. In fact, your future career could involve almost anything. For example, alumni often hold titles such as planner, coordinator, freelancer, entrepreneur, designer, manager, or consultant. In these roles, you will directly apply your versatile background and knowledge. The LingDig programme equips you with excellent capabilities to thrive in roles that require a generalist mindset and to excel at the diverse tasks they entail. Consequently, many of our alumni identify as "generalists" rather than just linguists.
Useful electives: language and culture studies, communication, marketing, and language technology
Opportunities: At the university, for example, teaching assistant or other trainee positions that are introduced by the university. Also, various traineeships in Finland and abroad are very much possible.
Many of our alumni with general linguistics backgrounds actually work in IT. There are titles like software engineer, IT supporter, and software developer. For instance, one of our alumni, Paula Toivanen, works as a designer in the IT sector, and her career tells a story that there really isn’t a field in this world where understanding of humans isn’t valuable. She also gets to use her knowledge of languages in her job.
Useful electives: language technology, statistics, mathematics, and language and culture studies
Opportunities: research assistant, lecture assistant, IT firms, and various other companies. For example, working with chatbots could be one of the tasks that is found in basically all companies nowadays.
For phoneticians, the most straightforward career route is academia. Your degree will prepare you well for doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki or elsewhere; in fact, many of our alumni have gone on to work as postdoctoral researchers and university lecturers both in Finland and abroad. In Helsinki, phonetics research focuses on prosody and speech synthesis and is highly interdisciplinary.
Useful electives: programming, statistics, cognitive science, languages, and general linguistics
Opportunities:
Clinical phonetics involves the acoustic analysis of speech in a clinical setting, for example, recording and evaluating impaired speech before and after oral surgery.
Useful electives: statistics, data science, health care
Opportunities: Helsinki University Hospital’s Phoniatrics Outpatient Clinic.
A degree from the programme will equip you with a diverse set of skills that are highly valuable beyond your specific field of study. In addition to the professional expertise of a phonetician, you will gain transferable skills applicable to a variety of administrative and project management roles, such as research administration. Phonetics is an inherently interdisciplinary field; depending on your interests, you can complement your degree with courses from areas such as language education, psychology, and cognitive science.
Useful electives: communications, language and culture studies, marketing, educational studies, cognitive science
Opportunities: Administrative internships at the university and in public administration.
Phonetics research at the University of Helsinki places a strong emphasis on prosody and speech synthesis. The naturalness of prosody, the non-verbal patterns of intonation, emphasis, and rhythm that help us convey meaning, remains one of the primary unsolved challenges in commercial and clinical speech synthesis. Complementing your studies with programming and machine learning courses from the language technology track can help you land a job not only in speech technology, but also in the broader, rapidly growing AI sector.
Useful electives: language technology, cognitive science, computer science, mathematics for linguists, machine learning, speech synthesis and recognition, and analysing speech with deep learning methods
Opportunities: Universities, government-led speech technology projects, speech technology companies.
While your studies will prepare you well for an academic career, experts in natural language processing (NLP) are also in high demand across a vast range of industries. Opportunities span from developing speech recognition software for tech giants to creating chatbots and medical transcription tools for healthcare providers. Additionally, translation and captioning companies rely increasingly on machine translation and automatic speech recognition, while data mining and information retrieval have become essential, everyday tools across all business sectors.
Some of our alumni have found careers at CSC, the Finnish supercomputer centre. An alumnus of ours works as the administrator of the Language Bank of Finland at CSC.
Useful electives: computer science, general linguistics, cognitive science, digital humanities, language and culture studies
Opportunities: Language technology firms, translation firms, CSC.
A degree in language technology will equip you with strong skills not only in natural language processing (NLP), but also in general programming. In today’s digital landscape, organisations require diverse skill sets across their IT and software development departments, ranging from core programmers and data engineers to systems analysts.
Useful electives: computer science, studies from the LingDig programme.
Opportunities: Software companies, government bureaus, ministries, and universities.
In an increasingly interconnected world, companies must translate and adapt their products for local markets, as well as author clear documentation for their end-users. In these roles, precise writing skills and deep cultural understanding are crucial; consequently, software firms actively seek professionals who combine a humanities background with the appropriate technical know-how.
Useful electives: computer science, cultural studies, and language studies
Opportunities: IT firms.
Many cognitive science graduates pursue their careers in academia. The programme prepares the students with a comprehensive knowledge of the brain, mind and behaviour. Cognitive scientists are able to use a variety of techniques that are beneficial in a university career. Among these techniques, there are behavioural measurements, brain research methods, surveys and interviews, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, and computational modelling.
Useful electives: language technology, statistics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, data science, computer science
Opportunities: research assistance. Graduates can apply to places in various Doctoral Programmes at the University of Helsinki
The LingDig programme provides very good basic skills that can prepare you to become an expert in user experience. Many cognitive scientists interested in this field have studied at the
Useful electives: human-computer interaction (HCI), user-centred design, language technology, linguistics, computer science, UX design, usability
Opportunities: user experience researcher, digital design consultant, UI/UX designer, service designer, usability and accessibility consultant.
The LingDig programme and the cognitive science study track provide the students with analytical, critical and creative thinking skills that can be applied in fields that are not strictly related to cognitive science. Your skills will be valuable in both the private and public sector where you will be able to coordinate and support key stakeholders.
Useful electives: psychology, management, political science, communication, linguistics, business
Opportunities: planning officer, coordinator, project manager, project coordinator.
Cognitive science graduates are well prepared for conducting research both in academia and in the industry. Many employers look for graduates who are capable of understanding how to make complex information, technology and systems more accessible. As such, the LingDig programme and its numerous courses provide the students with adequate skills to succeed in the communications field.
Useful electives: linguistics, business, communication, political science
Opportunities: project communicator, communication specialist, marketing and communication assistant, communication coordinator.
Digital Humanities gives you many possibilities in your working life. You have expertise in both the humanist point of view and the technical, data science view. Elective studies and other studies you do determine a lot of the way your career tasks will look. Like in any track in the programme or even in the faculty, you can follow your passions and make the degree suit your dreams and plans.
Becoming an academic seems like the straightforward path after the master’s thesis. For example, our alumnus Iiro Tiihonen felt that the research he had in mind was not ready yet, so he applied to become a doctoral student.
Useful electives: computer science, cognitive science, language studies, culture studies, linguistics, history, mathematics
Opportunities: researcher, lecturer, doctoral student
Digital Humanities graduates have an extensive and up-to-date knowledge of web technologies and their applicability. Students gain important skills in social and technology research and the methodologies involved.
Useful electives: language technology, computer science, communication, management, cultural studies, language studies, history, linguistics.
Opportunities: government, NGO’s, public administration, start-ups, international companies.
The Digital Humanities study track is versatile and combines traditional humanities subjects with technology subjects such as computing and data science. As such, it provides you with good skills that allow you to work as a data scientist. The main tasks of a data scientist are to be able to collect, analyze, and interpret big amounts of data.
Useful electives: computer science, cognitive science, language studies, linguistics, history, mathematics, and literature studies.
Opportunities: Finnish and international companies, NGO’s, tech companies.
The Digital Humanities study track (and the LingDig programme in general) prepares you well for a career as a specialist. Your teachers are leaders in their fields, meaning you might participate in groundbreaking research projects alongside your future colleagues. You will gain comprehensive knowledge of your chosen areas, ensuring that you graduate as an expert. This expertise is highly valued in both the private and public sectors, as well as by NGOs in Finland and abroad. Furthermore, nothing stops you from becoming an entrepreneur and leveraging your knowledge commercially.
Useful electives: communication, studies within the Lingdig programme or the Faculty of Arts, computer science
Opportunities: Government and public administration, NGOs