Helen Hint is a research fellow of academic writing and rhetoric at the University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics. In the Bwrite project, she is focusing on various linguistic features of Estonian academic texts.

Helen defended her PhD in general linguistics at the University of Tartu in 2021. In her PhD thesis (“From full phrase to zero: a multifactorial, form-specific and crosslinguistic analysis of Estonian referential system”), she studied the phenomenon of reference in Estonian and its contact languages. More specifically, she is interested in the usage patterns and overall system of different types of referential devices, especially anaphoric pronouns and demonstratives, noun phrases with article-like determiners, and full noun phrases without determiners.

In addition, Helen has studied academic writing and advocated the process-oriented approach to writing in the context of upper-secondary school teaching. She has attended the writing consultants’ training course at the University of Tartu.

She is currently enrolled in a teacher education MA program at the University of Tartu, Institute of Education.

Helen is also working as a lecturer of linguistics at Tallinn University. She teaches Morphology and Syntax Theories, Structure of Estonian, and Academic Writing at BA and MA level.

Helen is a member of the The Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE), the International Cognitive Linguistics Association (ICLA), the Mother Tongue Society (based in Estonia) and the Estonian Cognitive Linguistics Association (ECLA). She is the editor of Oma Keel, a popular science linguistics journal.