Doctoral education at the University of Helsinki is organised in doctoral programmes. Each doctoral programme is part of the University of Helsinki Doctoral School. The Faculty of Social Sciences is responsible for one doctoral programme. Additionally, a doctoral degree in social sciences can be completed in six other doctoral programmes coordinated by other faculties.
The right to complete a doctoral degree is always applied for in a doctoral programme, but the degrees are awarded by the faculties. When applying to a doctoral programme, the applicant chooses a target degree and home faculty based on their academic background and the topic of the planned doctoral thesis.
A Doctor of Social Sciences degree can be completed in the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences (SOC), as well as in six doctoral programmes coordinated by other faculties (the responsible faculty for each programme is indicated in brackets):
Information on how to apply to doctoral studies can be found on the doctoral programmes web pages.
You can find more information on profiles of the doctoral programme, their teaching curriculum, supervisors in the programme and how to apply for the programme on the programme's website. In conjunction with admission, the doctoral programme, the title of the doctoral degree to be pursued and supervision arrangements will be confirmed.
All the doctoral programmes at the University of Helsinki can be found on the
In all doctoral programmes, the degree comprises of a doctoral thesis and 30 credits of additional compulsory studies. The doctoral thesis can be either a monograph or an article-based thesis.
Each doctoral student will be assigned at least two supervisors who have completed a doctoral degree and of whom at least one has a permanent or long-term employment contract with the Faculty in which the student will pursue the doctoral degree.
In addition, each student will be assigned a coordinating academic. At the Faculty of Social Sciences, coordinating academics may be professors or docents on the third or fourth tier of the career path for teaching and research staff at the Faculty or at the Swedish School of Social Science, who are in a contractual employment at the Faculty or at the Swedish School of Social Science, and have prior experience in supervising dissertations to their completion.
Staff positions on the third tier are e.g., Assistant/Associate professor (tenure track), Senior university lecturer, University lecturer, University researcher, Senior researcher and Academy research fellow.
The coordinating academic may also serve as one of the dissertation supervisors. Further information on the role of the coordinating academic is available on