Baba Lybeck’s career as a journalist and presenter began when she left school in 1985. Lybeck applied for a job with Radio City and thought she’d end up doing office work. It came as quite a surprise when someone came to inform her that hey, your programme starts on Sundays at 1pm. The programme was Havis Amanda, where Lybeck read out readers’ requests and played music.

She began her studies at the University only a few years later in 1987. But the work in media took up all the time she might have been studying. Lybeck presented the Radio City morning shows, MTV3’s NoTV, the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Lista Top 40 music programme, the Swedish-language channel FST’s Bosses Bio and Talking Heads as well as the Jussi Gala awards from 2003 to 2007.

In 1998 Baba Lybeck became a journalist and presenter for Channel 4 news, a job she did for a good ten years. In 2009 Lybeck moved across to the Finnish Broadcasting Company to work as production secretary on the Puoli Seitsemän magazine programme, and since 2010 she presided over the teams in Finland’s own version of the popular satirical news format Have I Got News For You.

Most of Baba Lybeck’s work involves performing. Admittedly her university studies were not much help in that. But there were other rewarding experiences during her years at the University.

“Apart from a general education, my studies at the University also gave me an appreciation of the importance of text and image, something which has been enormously useful in my journalism and presenting,” says Lybeck.

The literary studies involved the analysis of a great many texts, which gave an understanding of the variety of text types. Lybeck gained her skills in visual communication from studies in the University’s Svenska social- och kommunalhögskolan and for television, her study exchange visit to Århus in Denmark through the Nord Plus programme.