What enticed me to study history was my experience of the five history teachers I had at grammar school, each of them inspiring in their own way. The first one was a Marxist, the second a dyed-in-the-wool patriot, the third emphatically unassuming and the fourth taught passionately, with her whole body – the fifth lectured in a kind of university style. What they all shared was an unashamed love of their subject. And since my Latin teacher was as inspiring as all the above mentioned put together, I also added Latin and Roman literature to my curriculum.

“A humanities scholar has no career – or at least no career plans,” was the motto of my generation of students, inspired by the Humboldtian educational ideal. But with the benefit of hindsight, my orientation into my career seems almost premeditated. I took advantage of intriguing offers of temporary jobs and gained practical experience in digging into archives, interview studies, and the importance of keeping schedules.

Creating the Jukola – Jakomäki – Brussels, Finland 75 Years exhibition in the Heureka Science Centre was an empowering project. Never before had history been presented in an interactive exhibition in Finland, and examples abroad were also few and far between. We knew no precedents, no restrictions. The founders of Heureka had fortunately defined the scope of the science centre with the Finnish term 'tiede' and the Swedish 'vetenskap' in mind, i.e., to cover all academic fields rather than merely science, the hard sciences.

My interest in the history of Antiquity and the Latin language blossomed into a love of Mediterranean culture and especially of Italy. At the beginning of my studies, I majored in Classical Antiquity, and I took two courses at the Finnish Institute in Rome, one short and one a whole semester long.

Science is international. Following the principle of open access to science, even the ideas of science centres are disseminated globally. The founders of Heureka were following both European and North American examples, but when they decided a Finnish science centre must also produce exhibitions of its own they ensured that Heureka would also make its own significant international contribution. When Heureka was opened in 1989, there were about 400 science centres around the world, today they are approximately 3000.

A historian lives in a world of text, but the picture predates writing, and even a baby will communicate with faces and gestures before learning to speak. Studying, interpreting and making pictures have always fascinated me, even though they have never played a central part in my life. The photography hobby of my youth, watching endless motion pictures at the Finnish Film Archive, my picture editing jobs, and producing the Kronikka periodical provided me with the joys of visual appreciation during my studies.

Mikko Myllykoski took part in the Constructive Partnership project of the Faculty of Arts in 2010–2011. With the help of alumni working in various fields, the project explored how teaching at the Faculty could be improved to better answer the needs of working life. Other issues to which the project…

I once took part in a post-doctoral party where the (successful) doctoral candidate, in a traditional speech to all the senior scholars and friends who had contributed to his work, thanked me for helping him understand the significance of the useless in life. I considered this a great honour. I…