Executive Board

Research unit

Health sciences

Responsibilities

PhD, Docent (Narrative Theory)

Senior Lecturer, Comparative Literature

Consortium Principal Investigator, Instrumental Narratives (Academy of Finland 2018-2022)

Project Leader, Dangers of Narrative (Kone Foundation 2017-2020)

Lead Project Leader, INFOSTORY: Storytelling in Information Systems Development (Aaltonen Foundation 2019-2022)

Field of expertise

Comparative Literature, Narratology, Narrative Theory, Narrative Studies

Research fields

Comparative Literature, Narratology, Narrative Theory, Narrative Studies

About me

After having finished my masters degree in environmental economics at the University of Helsinki in 1998, I received a Fulbright Fellowship to enter a doctorate program in philosophy in the US. I graduated from Boston University in 2005 with a thesis ”Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Development of Mathematics in the Late Nineteenth Century” supervised by Jaakko Hintikka. I then returned to Finland where I have taught and researched in various universities (of Helsinki, Tampere, and Jyväskylä). I have enjoyed several research fellowships also to visit other Nordic countries: e.g., Uppsala (SCAS, 2014), Oslo (CAS, 2015-2016), Ås, Norway (2016-2017). I am currently University Lecturer at Tampere University (until July 31, 2020). 

My research has focused on Edmund Husserl's (early and late) views on mathematics, which I have examined both systematically and historically. My central starting point is the conviction that due to Husserl's methodological commitments, his systematic views are necessarily intimately tied to their historical context. I have recently finished a book manuscript on Husserl and mathematics (with publishing contract with Cambridge University Press). The book explains Husserl’s context in mathematics from the turn of the century until Husserl’s death in 1938, with a special focus on the 1920s and the 1930s. Drawing from the markings in the books Husserl had in his library as well as his correspondence, the book details Husserl’s knowledge of e.g., Hilbert’s, Brouwer’s, and Weyl’s views on the foundations of mathematics as well as his awareness of the new developments in the foundations in the 1930s. This knowledge of Husserl’s scientific context is then used to explain some changes in Husserl’s views during those years. Ultimately the book argues for phenomenological philosophy of mathematics as a "mathematics-first" combination of structuralism, Platonism, and constructivism that is open to embrace new developments and new evidences.

I am particularly interested in Husserl's method, that, as he says, uses ‘Besinnung’ to engage in 'an intentional explication' of the sciences. Husserl defines Besinnung as a method with which philosophers should enter in a ”community of empathy with the scientists” in order to find out their goals and hence the sense of the scientific activity they are engaged in. Husserl's mathematical writings show how Husserl combines Besinnung with transcendental phenomenology, so that the role of the latter is to make Besinnung radical, that is, make it a critical evaluation of the practices of the exact sciences. I argue that thus Husserl's phenomenology ultimately aims at a contextual revision of practices, concepts, and institutions. 

I am currently working on a series of papers investigating the naturalistic features of Husserlian phenomenology. While phenomenology is critical of what has been called reductive ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism, in its attempt to examine scientific or other practices “on their own” it resembles certain more contemporary forms of naturalism. This interest has led me to work on Husserl's ethics that I think can be fruitfully elaborated in comparison with Philip Kitcher's Ethical Project.  

About me

I have worked as a researcher in Tampere University since 2010. In the beginning of 2020 I moved from the Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences to the Faculty of Social Sciences. In my doctoral thesis titled ”Prekarisaation tunnemaisema – Vastustavat taktiikat, tunnelmat ja elämänpolitiikka verkon julkisuudessa”, I studied anonymous online discussions and their societal significance, and the different operational logics of social media platforms and anonymously used discussion forums. The sub-studies in my thesis concerned social criticism and counter-publics in online discussions, the dissemination of radical thinking and hate speech as well as discussions about precarity, generalized instability in modern societies, in the intimate public of the online forum.

At the moment I work in the Flows of Power project (Academy of Finland 2019-2022), where we investigate the agency of journalistic media in the flows of information, public opinion and power. My post-doctoral project is focused on economic policy journalism.

I graduated from the master's programme in media culture (University of Tampere) in 2009. In the past I have also worked as a journalist and copywriter.

Research fields

Media studies, journalism studies, social media, media literacy, reading practices

Field of expertise

Welfare state reasearch

Working-class culture

Working-class literature