University of Helsinki
Areas of Interest
My areas of interest are phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, Husserl) and existentialism (Beauvoir, Sartre, Nietzsche). Currently, I am particularly interested in the possibilities of philosophical thought in our time and alternative forms of philosophical expression. Other themes I have worked on include intersubjectivity, embodiment, temporality, power relationships, gender, and the human–animal relationship.
Current Research
I am the director of the project HARMAA: Indirect Philosophy as a Form of Resistance – How to Reinforce Individual Agency in a Post-Truth Era. The project deals with the intertwining of deception, self-deception and sense of agency in our time. It also experiments with “indirect philosophy”, that is, non-argumentative or “softly argumentative” forms of philosophy. The results of these experiments are published in our blog.
Earlier Research
Before this project I have investigated the temporality of despair (project Despair and Time), alienation and inclusion in learning philosophy (project Gender and Philosophy), the links between androcentrism and anthropocentrism in existentialism (project Project and Possibility: Beauvoirian Postanthropocentric Existentialism), intersubjectivity in the reading experience and the possibility of empathising with animals in literature (project Empathising with the Non-Human Other in Ancient Greek Literature), and empathising with non-human animals more generally (PhD project).
The Relevance and Benefits of My Research
Most of my research deals with areas that have not been researched adequately due to implicit biases within philosophy or, more generally, in society, and which are intertwined with different kinds of structures of inequity. My research elucidates such issues at an existential level, hence providing readers a possibility to rethink them through their own experiences.
Education and Affiliations
The University of Helsinki is my alma mater, where I defended my doctoral dissertation in Theoretical Philosophy in 2011. After working for several years (2015-2022) at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, and obtaining the title of Docent in Philosophy there (2017), I returned to the University of Helsinki in 2023, this time in the discipline of Practical Philosophy. I have a deep interest in literature and the visual arts, and I have a degree in the visual arts from Art School MAA (1991).
Other Activities
In addition to doing research and teaching, I have translated philosophical texts from French and English into Finnish. These include several works by Simone de Beauvoir as well as texts by Christine de Pizan, Catharine Macaulay, Olympe de Gouges and Harriet Taylor Mill. Translating a part of Christine’s The Book of the City of Ladies was an important inspiration to my ongoing project. From the beginning of 2023, I am the President of the International Simone de Beauvoir Society.