Thursday 12 December 2013

Researcher in the CoE for 2014-2016

I shall be working as a salaried researcher in the CoE for the period of its first half from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2016. My immediate context will be team 3, which focuses on creating philosophical models to help understand contemporary religious discourse. The research team is lead by Sami Pihlström who is currently also the director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

I studied, received my doctoral degree in theoretical philosophy, and held research and teaching positions at the University of Helsinki. For the past five years, however, I have been operating as a part of the philosophy unit at the University of Tampere. After half a decade and a very enjoyable work period at Tampere, I shall be returning to the Helsinki City Centre Campus. I am also looking forward to a continuing cooperation with Tampere.

Monday 9 December 2013

More Information on the Centre of Excellence

Risto Saarinen, the Director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence Reason and Religious Recognition has established a new personal website including a section on the CoE titled 'Recognition' [link here].

A concise information sheet on the structure and themes of the CoE, its vice-director, and the leaders of the three teams can also be found on the Helsinki Faculty of Theology's website [link here]. Research team 1 is lead by Ismo Dunderberg, team 2 by Virpi Mäkinen (the CoE's vice-director) together with Taneli Kukkonen, and team 3 by Sami Pihlström.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

Categories of Being

As a central part of my research background, I have co-edited with Leila Haaparanta a volume with the title Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, published by Oxford University Press in 2012. In addition to writing parts of the Introduction, my personal contribution consists of the Chapter 15 on "Quine, Predication, and the Categories of Being" (pp. 338-357).

More information on the contents and contributors of the Categories of Being volume can be found at the publisher's website. [A link to the publisher's page here.]

The volume has been reviewed by Stephen Read in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. [A link to the review here.]

Wednesday 25 September 2013

Beginnings

The Centre of Excellence held its startup gathering on Monday, 23 September 2013, at the University of Helsinki's Faculty Hall of Theology. A couple of weeks before, a story involving the CoE had also appeared in Kirkko & Kaupunki (No 34, p. 3) [in Finnish, link here].

The governing board of the CoE consists of the director, the vice-director, and the leaders of the three teams in which individual scholars work. Team 1 focuses on Christianity, Judaism and Greco-Roman Thought, Team 2 on Medieval and Early Modern Thought, and Team 3 on Contemporary Philosophy of Religion.

Monday 17 June 2013

Reason and Religious Recognition

On the 4th of June 2013, the Board of the Academy of Finland designated 14 new Centres of Excellence in Research for the six-year period of 2014-2019. One of these new CoEs was Reason and Religious Recognition, directed by Professor Risto Saarinen (University of Helsinki). [A link to the news release by the Academy of Finland]

Centres of Excellence are research and training networks that have a clearly defined set of research objectives and are run under a joint management. The fact that funding is provided for a six-year period means that CoEs can work to long-term plans.