Grants and Writing Resources for University of Helsinki

The University of Helsinki's 2025 doctoral thesis awards, which recognize theses of outstanding merit, went to four doctoral graduates. Funded doctoral posts are competitive. In the 2024 application round, 937 applications came in for 118 new salaried doctoral researcher positions. Master's students writing a thesis can apply once for the Get Your Master's Thesis Written! grant, seven days of accommodation and full board at a University research station such as Hyytiälä or Tvärminne.

Funding a Doctorate

The University regularly offers salaried doctoral researcher positions, with salary and social security included, and each doctoral programme announces its call once a year. The positions are full-time and aim at a completed doctorate within four years. Other doctoral researchers fund their work with grants from foundations and organisations in Finland and abroad.

The final stretch has its own support. The Doctoral School offers financial support for thesis completion as short-term, three-month employment contracts, and the University's January 2025 news report counted 17 thesis-finalisation grants in the autumn 2024 call.

Travel and Student Grants

The Doctoral School's travel support for doctoral researchers pays for trips to scientific events in Finland and abroad, covering participation fees, travel and accommodation under the University's travel policy, and costs such as visas or poster printing. Research visits are excluded. Across its spring and autumn rounds, the University reported more than €1.4 million in travel grants to over 800 researchers, with a goal of at least one international trip for every doctoral researcher over a four-year term.

Students at other levels can apply to University of Helsinki Funds, more than 350 named and discipline-specific funds that grant about €400,000 a year in total, travel grants among them. Master's students writing a thesis can apply once for the Get Your Master's Thesis Written! grant, which covers seven days of accommodation and full board at a University research station such as Hyytiälä or Tvärminne. Licentiate students in medicine, dentistry and veterinary medicine qualify too.

Writing Courses and Language Help

Some degree programmes build academic writing courses into the curriculum, and the Language Centre offers optional ones as well. Its autumn 2026 list includes Academic Writing 2: Process and Feedback, an online course for master's students in the Viikki and Kumpula programmes who are writing a thesis, and Advanced English: Feedback on Writing, built around a 45-minute meeting with a teacher. Finnish-language options include Bachelor's Thesis Writing.

Doctoral candidates get one more service. The Language Centre's language revision service will revise doctoral dissertations, licentiate theses and other postgraduate texts at cost price, working on spelling, grammar, readability and academic style.

Where Theses Are Published

Since January 2025, every degree programme has handled master's theses through E-thesis, the University's system for submitting and assessing theses, and bachelor's theses now use it too. Students choose whether to permit open publication. Abstracts are always public. Approved theses pass to Helda, the University's digital repository, which also archives Helsinki's digital doctoral theses and as a rule publishes dissertations and theses openly.

For journalism, the Student Union of the University of Helsinki (HYY) wholly owns the company that publishes Ylioppilaslehti, a magazine founded in 1913.

For a final edit before submission, our PhD-level editors work with Helsinki students at every level. See our University of Helsinki dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.