The idea behind the field trips is to provide students an opportunity to learn how to carry out fieldwork in a real-life scenario. Throughout the stay, students have an opportunity to discuss results and challenges with fellow students and more advanced researchers in a confidential atmosphere. At the end of the excursions, we hope to have achieved two objectives: the participants will have gained substantial expertise in linguistic fieldwork skills, while making a valuable contribution to the linguistic documentation and analysis of the target languages.
Travel costs and the required technical equipment often make field linguistic on-site training and research rather expensive. HALS organizes the field trips whenever financial support is received, so that all expenses are fully covered. The participants only need to contribute to minor costs personally (e.g. travel insurance).
The demand has been high - a high number of students and researchers are interested in joining the field trips. While not all applicants will have the opportunity to join, we also organize a range of additional activities, such as teaching events coordinated by various departments, lectures by invited speakers, thematic workshops and intensive courses on languages that are not frequently taught in Helsinki. Those joining the field excursion team should participate in these activities, but other students are also very welcome to join in: our activities are open to a broader audience!
Read about the previous field trips: