The University of Helsinki Doctoral School supports doctoral researchers in a range of ways. In addition to salaried positions funded by the University, the doctoral school last year provided 17 doctoral researchers with financial support for finalising their doctoral theses and awarded travel grants to more than 800.
Every year, the University of Helsinki finances more than a hundred new salaried doctoral researcher positions, helping researchers to concentrate fully on their doctoral research and studies.
A total of 118 new positions were available in the application round for 2024, of which 10 were allocated to doctoral programmes that did not receive any positions in the calls of the national doctoral education pilot .
In the call, open from late August to early September, 937 applications were submitted. The applicants represented 80 nationalities, most of them Finnish, but many applications were also received from China, Pakistan, India and Italy.
The appointees represented 38 nationalities. Women accounted for 58% of the applicants and 59% of the appointees. Roughly half of the applicants and nearly three-quarters of the appointees had completed their master's degrees in Finland.
The doctoral programmes selected the appointees whose names were published on the doctoral school's website .
Funding for the final stages of doctoral theses
The completion of doctoral theses is supported by awarding three-month grants for finalising theses to doctoral researchers in the final stages of their work. In the autumn 2024 call for applications, the doctoral school awarded 17 such grants, enabling doctoral researchers to concentrate full-time on finalising their doctoral theses and submitting their work for preliminary examination at the end of their employment.
Support for international mobility
The University of Helsinki Doctoral School supports the international visibility and networking of doctoral researchers by organising a call for travel support applications twice a year. The goal is to enable at least one international trip for each doctoral researcher in a four-year term to present their research at conferences and establish contacts with the international research community.
In the autumn round, more than €370,000 in travel grants was awarded to over 200 doctoral researchers for their conference trips in late 2024 and early 2025. In the spring and autumn travel grant application rounds, the doctoral school awarded a total of over €1.4 million to over 800 doctoral researchers.
The support provided by the University of Helsinki Doctoral School for doctoral researchers has been updated in the past year.
"We promote the smooth graduation, international visibility and diverse career paths of doctoral researchers through a variety of funding forms," says Director Minna Palander-Collin of the doctoral school.
