I’m Professor of Politics at King’s College London, and I specialize on political theory, history, and philosophy. Currently my research focuses on topics such as corruption, rationality, democracy, and racism. I also work more broadly on the philosophy of social science and methodology.
My stay at HCAS was the happiest time of my academic career. Living in Finland was a dream – I especially enjoyed hiking in nature. The multi-disciplinary environment of the Collegium, hosting so many interesting and clever scholars, was extremely stimulating for me. Indeed, after my fellowship, I’ve been collaborating on a corruption project with another former HCAS fellow, the anthropologist Cris Shore.
My Collegium application involved my project on thought experiments (such as “Should we kill one person to save five lives?”), which led me to argue that the methodology of thought experiments in political theory and philosophy is surprisingly close to the methodology of comparison in the social sciences. I presented this finding at a dozen universities in Finland and elsewhere, benefiting especially from feedback received during my presentations in Helsinki, Turku, and Oulu.
My fellowship was very productive and resulted in several publications. I wrote an article criticizing caricatures about social science. Why do so many clever people say so many wrong things about social science – for instance that it aims at prediction and laws? Another paper placed the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his racist context. It remains an open question as to whether Hobbes himself was racist, but he would have read and heard ideas that we can and should call “racist”. Further, I published an article criticizing intellectual historians who think of themselves only as historians, without realising that they are also philosophers, and I continued my campaign against unconvincing efforts to draw contemporary insights from history. The last of these papers was especially fun to write, although it won’t win me many friends! Finally, I edited a volume on Quentin Skinner’s seminal 1969 essay ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, which will be published by the British Academy.
The experience made me fall in love with Finland, and I have already returned three times since!
I am a University Researcher and Docent in Psychology at the University of Helsinki, specializing in fertility research.
My fellowship at the Collegium (2020–2024) was crucial for my growth and development as a fertility researcher. I study why young people postpone parenthood from a psychological perspective. My path to this topic was not straightforward: during my PhD, I worked in family and health psychology, and my postdoctoral research focused on public health. The fellowship at the Collegium provided me with the much-needed time and freedom to explore a new field, establish important collaborations, and shape my own research identity. It also helped me to recognize the value of my interdisciplinary background and apply it to my current research.
Equally important, the discussions with other fellows and our joint seminars gave me the confidence to believe in and further develop my own ideas. This experience helped me find my niche and strengthened my belief that fertility research greatly benefits from psychological perspectives.
At the end of my fellowship, I started to develop a new line of research related to psychology of fertility behaviour. I recently received the FWF–Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Merit Award to establish my own team and lead a three-year project at the Vienna Institute of Demography. I look forward to these new opportunities and will always remember my time at the Collegium with great warmth and gratitude.