Matti Miestamo

Matti Miestamo is a Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Helsinki, affiliated with the Department of General Linguistics within the Faculty of Arts. He previously held a professorship at Stockholm University (2011–2018) and has held research positions at institutions including the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2006–2011) and the University of Antwerp (2005–2006). His expertise spans language typology, documentation, and theoretical linguistics with a focus on negation, interrogatives, and language complexity. He has supervised 4 completed, 2 submitted, and 8 ongoing PhD students at the University of Helsinki.

Education: PhD in General Linguistics from the University of Helsinki (2003). Awards include membership in the Academia Europaea (2019), Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters (2019), and Societas Scientiarum Fennica (2017). Notable honors include the Joseph Greenberg Award (2005) and Burgen Scholar Award (2004).

Research Interests:

• Language typology and documentation
• Negation structures across languages
• Uralic languages, particularly Skolt Saami
• Grammatical complexity theories
• Methodological approaches to linguistic sampling

Professional Roles:

• Editor of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics (2012–present)
• Director of the Finnish doctoral training network Langnet (2016–2019)
• Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki (2017)

Teaching and Outreach: Extensive teaching experience in linguistics at multiple institutions, including summer schools in Tartu and Saari Manor. Active in academic assessment roles, including professorship and docent evaluations in universities across Europe.