At the beginning of your studies, you will create a personal study plan with your teachers who will help you find which courses suit you best and what obligatory courses you need to take. The personal study plan will be created in a tool called Sisu. When it comes to elective courses, it all depends on what you are interested in, and you are quite free to take anything that you like. If you are, for example, a general linguistics major, you could complement your studies with language technology, or a phonetics student might be interested in cognitive science, or vice versa. You can also take courses from other programmes and faculties as long as you fulfill their prerequisites.
Read more about planning your studies
Read more about optional studies
The preliminary teaching programmes for the next academic year. Preliminary teaching programmes contain information on which courses can be completed during the academic year, in which period, in which language and what is their method of completion. The final teaching programmes for master’s programmes are published in Sisu. LingDig is an interdisciplinary programme and therefore we encourage our students to take courses from other study tracks within the programme but also from other study tracks or even faculties. Remember to check the prerequisites other subjects may have and if you have the study right to take the courses.
Check the courses offered in the LingDig programme and search for all the courses the University of Helsinki and the open university offer.
Check the courses of our degree programme.
Language technology blog, phonetics blog, digital humanities blog, general linguistics blog list the track-specific courses.
The course named Approaches to Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities is worth 10 credits and it is compulsory for all LingDig master’s students. It is usually available every year in the autumn term, I and II period.
In addition, you should attend courses worth 20 credits from any study track part of the LingDig programme. These 20 credits courses will be agreed with your teacher tutor at the beginning of your studies.
The study tracks that are part of the integrated international master’s programme in Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities (LingDig) are: general linguistics, cognitive science, digital humanities, language technology and phonetics.
A detailed description of the LingDig MA programme’s study tracks.
When you apply, you choose one track as your major and you will complete most of your studies in that track. All the tracks follow this structure: 90 credits of advanced studies + 30 credits of elective studies (= 120 credits). The 90 credits you will study within the LingDig programme and the 30 credits you can choose freely from any faculty or university.
Yes. The LingDig programme contains roughly four 30 credit sets:
In general, alumni of the Faculty of Arts have a high employment rate. Our recent survey of over forty LingDig alumni suggests that most graduates find that skills they acquired during their studies are highly relevant and valuable in their careers. Get inspired by our example career paths, and see our alumni testimonials to learn more!
Check also what higher education graduates do. From the Linkedin page of the University of Helsinki you can for example see where the alumni work, and if there are open job positions at the university.
Our students come from all over the world, and we can’t know much in advance which nationalities we will have each year. Approximately one-third of the students in the programme are international and the remaining are Finnish.
Overall, the University of Helsinki has a total of 31,600 degree students of which 3,215 are international degree and exchange students. In 2021, alongside Finland, the highest number of admitted students to the university came from China, the USA and Bangladesh.
LingDig is an international programme and therefore the teaching language is English. Finland is a bilingual country: our official languages are Finnish and Swedish. Living in Finland is a great opportunity to learn a non-Indo-European language and learning the local language will boost your understanding of what is going on around you in Finnish society and culture! Finns have good proficiency in English, so you can take care of your everyday tasks in English as well. Finnish people love it though, if someone tries to speak Finnish, so Finnish courses can be useful in that sense as well.
Check the housing instructions by the university. We recommend you start your house hunting as soon as possible. Helsinki is quite an expensive city to live in, so be prepared to pay at least €500-€600 per month for a studio apartment. In a shared apartment, the rent is around €200-€400. The university cannot guarantee you an apartment but it is available to help you in your search. The LingDig programme does not have apartments to offer for students and questions related to housing should be sent directly to the housing organization, for instance, to HOAS (Contacts).
As a degree student in Finland, you are entitled to the Finnish Student Health Services. FSHS is an affordable health service, and you get access to it when you pay the healthcare fee. More about the healthcare fee. Any further questions are to be directed to FSHS.
Didn’t find an answer to your question? Here you can find the contact information for Admission services, Student services and other helpful university services.