Honorary Doctorate Awarded to Kaisa Häkkinen

The Faculty of Arts and Humanities awarded an honorary doctorate to Kaisa Häkkinen, emerita professor at the University of Turku (Finland), on 1 October 2021. The award honoured her outstanding research in the field of Finnish Studies and Finnougristics as well as her services toward the internationalisation of research and to scientific communication. The honour was presented in the presence of the Finnish Ambassador on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first Teaching Unit for the Finnish Language in the German-speaking world, at the University of Greifswald.

By awarding this honorary title to Prof. em. Dr. Kaisa Häkkinen, the University of Greifswald is honouring a long-term collaboration partner with an outstanding international reputation. Her key fields of research in the historical morphology and phonetics, the external history of language, etymology, lexicology and science history are generally recognised as belonging to the core of Finland’s so-called national sciences. Thanks to a broad international network and publications in several languages, of which an impressive amount is available in German, Prof. Dr. Kaisa Häkkinen has played a decisive role in the internationalisation of the fields of research that she represents. In particular, by acknowledging research performed by foreign scholars in the field of Finnish studies and providing structural and ideational support to young foreign researchers, she has fostered the development of a productive international research community.

Kaisa Häkkinen's list of publications includes over 750 pieces of writing, both scientific and in the popular sciences. Scientific integrity, meticulous source analysis, stylistic precision and clarity of arguments are characteristic for her entire publishing activity.Kaisa Häkkinen not only successfully published works with researchers from other philologies, but also together with researchers from fields such as history, church history, theology, botany, zoology, and medicine. She has received many prizes and awards for her publications. Of these, the State Award for Public Information (2005) stands out, but there are many more. She received several prizes for the 1600-page etymological dictionary Nykysuomen etymologinen sanakirja (also 2005). Due to her remarkable contributions to academia and society, Kaisa Häkkinen was voted Professor of the Year in a Finland-wide and interdisciplinary contest run by the Finnish Union of University Professors (Professoriliitto) In 2018, the State Commission for Teaching awarded her the Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding promotion of broad social interest in Finnish language history. Finally, in 2020, Kaisa Häkkinen was awarded her country's highest academic honour when the President of Finland bestowed upon her the title of Tieteen akateemikko (Science academic).

Kaisa Häkkinen held numerous academic posts during her career. She was, among other things, Dean and member of the university governance at the University of Turku. She has also served as a board member and chairperson of the Helsinki State Centre for the Study of Indigenous Languages, as a board member of the Kalevala Institute and as a member of the Cultural Committee of the Finnish UNESCO Commission. In 2002 she was appointed to the Academy of Science of Finland. She has held leadership positions in numerous scientific societies, including the Linguistic Association of Finland (Helsinki), the Finno-Ugric Society (Helsinki), the Finnish Language Society (Turku), the Porthan Society (Turku) and the Mikael Agricola Society (also in Turku). She also served as editor-in-chief and editorial board member of numerous important scientific journals.

Career

Kaisa Häkkinen was born in Kouvola (Finland) in 1950. After rapid progress in her studies of Finno-Ugric linguistics, Finnish literature, phonetics and general linguistics, as well as parallel studies of folklore and classical philology, which she began in Helsinki in 1969, she gained the title of Candidate in Philosophy at the age of 22, which is equivalent to a German Magister. In 1978 she obtained a licentiate degree and in 1984, she obtained her doctorate as a filosofian tohtori, which corresponds to the German habilitation, with a thesis on the oldest Finnish vocabulary and on the foundations and methodology of Finnougristic etymological research. Even before completion of her doctorate, Kaisa Häkkinen held research assistant positions and temporary professorships in the fields of general linguistics and Finno-Ugric language research. Following various positions as assistant and interim professor, she was appointed Chair of Finnish at the Swedish-language Åbo Akademi in 1996.In 1999, she finally received a call to the Chair of Finnish at the University of Turku, a position she held until 2015. In the meantime, she also worked as a researcher at the Academy of Finland.