The International Council of Onomastic Sciences (ICOS) hosted its third Summer School in Helsinki, Finland, from 24 to 28 August 2026, bringing together a new generation of onomastic scholars for an intensive, forward-looking week of training, exchange, and collaboration. This year's theme, "Digital tools and databases," reflected the profound transformation that digital methods, large datasets, and AI are bringing to the study of names. The course was designed primarily for PhD students, with motivated Master's students also welcome, and offered a rare opportunity to learn from leading international experts while working hands-on with contemporary onomastic data.
Participation was exclusive to ICOS members, and the programme was hybrid, with capacity for up to 25 on-site and 25 online participants. Thanks to support from ICOS and the University of Helsinki, the course carried no participation fee, and attendees received a diploma and a recommendation for 5 ECTS credits, to be validated by their home universities. This matches your own figures closely: 20 in-person and several online participants, with 13 lectures and 22 participant presentations over the week.
The course organizer was Milla Juhonen of the University of Helsinki.
This was the third in a young but established series
The first ICOS Summer School was held at the University of Helsinki, 26–30 August 2019, on the theme "Methods of Onomastics," with 21 participants from 15 countries, coordinated by Lasse Hämäläinen and led by Terhi Ainiala and Paula Sjöblom. The second edition moved to the University of Glasgow, 21–25 August 2023, on the theme "The Interdisciplinary Uses of Onomastics." The 2026 Helsinki edition thus returned the series to its founding institution, six years after the first, this time centred on digital methods rather than foundational methodology — a natural progression as the field's tools have matured.
Programme, day by day
Monday 24 August - Orientation: from fieldwork to data
The week opened with an orientation day connecting traditional fieldwork and observation to digital research. Terhi Ainiala introduced how interviews and observations can be transformed into onomastic data, followed by Leena Kolehmainen, who explored how multilingual cemetery landscapes move from visual reality to structured digital databases. Group activities helped participants get to know one another and build a collaborative learning environment.
Tuesday 25 August - Working with data
The focus shifted to data itself: a session on research data management, followed by lectures on working with imperfect historical name data (Minna Nevala) and on the challenges of digital tools in minority-language onomastics, with a focus on Saami (Taarna Valtonen), plus a lecture on the role of generative AI in higher education (Kalle Juuti). The day closed with an onomastics-themed city walk, turning Helsinki itself into a living dataset.
Wednesday 26 August - Presenting and practising
Wednesday was devoted to presentation workshops, giving participants the chance to practise not only presenting their own research but also chairing sessions — key academic skills rarely taught formally. A recreational outing in the afternoon added a social dimension to the academic programme. This is almost certainly where the bulk of the 22 participant presentations you mention were delivered and peer-chaired.
Thursday 27 August - The breadth of digital onomastics
Lectures ranged from place names in Helsinki literature (Lieven Ameel) to names in the video game Alan Wake II (Lasse Hämäläinen & Milla Juhonen), from street-name ideologies visualised over time and space (Isabelle Buchstaller & Seraphim Alvanides) to online and offline linguistic landscapes (Väinö Syrjälä). An excursion to the Institute for the Languages of Finland rounded out the day.
Friday 28 August - Hands-on digital tools and closing
The week culminated in a fully hands-on focus: working with the digital Names Archive (Jaakko Raunamaa), exploring onomastic terminology via the Helsinki Term Bank (Harri Kettunen), and discussing the opportunities and challenges of automatic pseudonymisation (Therese Lindström Tiedemann & Lisa Södergård). The closing discussion tied together methods, ethics, and future directions for digital name research.
13 lecturers by
Terhi Ainiala · Leena Kolehmainen · Minna Nevala · Taarna Valtonen · Kalle Juuti · Lieven Ameel · Lasse Hämäläinen & Milla Juhonen (joint) · Isabelle Buchstaller & Seraphim Alvanides (joint) · Väinö Syrjälä · Jaakko Raunamaa · Harri Kettunen · Therese Lindström Tiedemann & Lisa Södergård (joint) - thirteen named sessions in total.
Important topics:
- digitisation or database-building for specific regional/minority toponymic or anthroponymic corpora (echoing Nevala's and Valtonen's sessions),
- computational or corpus-linguistic approaches to socio-onomastics (echoing Syrjälä's linguistic-landscape lecture),
- names in digital/fictional media such as games or literature (echoing the Hämäläinen/Juhonen and Ameel lectures),
- GIS or spatial-visualisation approaches to street or place names (echoing Buchstaller & Alvanides), and
- questions of data ethics, anonymisation, or AI use in name research (echoing the Lindström Tiedemann/Södergård and Juuti sessions).
Sources
- e-Onomastics: "Apply for the ICOS Summer School until 31 January 2026" - http://e-onomastics.blogspot.com/2026/01/apply-for-icos-summer-school-until-31.html - the primary programme announcement
- ICOS Newsletter, August 2024 - https://icosweb.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Newsletter-August-2024-1-1.pdf
- Nordic Socio-onomastics: "ICOS Summer School in Helsinki" - https://www.nordicsocioonomastics.org/icos-summer-school-in-helsinki/ - 2019 edition report
- UNGEGN GEGN.2/2023/121 report - https://unstats.un.org/unsd/ungegn/sessions/3rd_session_2023/documents/GEGN.2_2023_121_CRP121.pdf - confirms the 2023 Glasgow edition
- Wikipedia: International Council of Onomastic Sciences - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_of_Onomastic_Sciences
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