The project's PI, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. She will be leading the ERC-funded Competence and Success research project until the end of 2022.
Before moving to her native Finland, she was an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Before Michigan she was at Oxford, where she got a BPhil and DPhil (2010), and was a Fitzjames Research Fellow at Merton College. She is an Editor of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Though she mainly works in epistemology, her philosophical interests are broad. At the moment she is writing a book for Oxford University Press that aims to formulate her big picture in epistemology, bringing together work she has published in various articles.
You can contact Maria at maria DOT lasonen AT helsinki DOT fi
In September 2018, Giada Fratantonio joined the project as a postdoc. In particular, she investigates the prospects of a novel Externalist Knowledge-first variety of Evidentialism, one that is sensitive to the various ways in which a doxastic attitude can be epistemically defective and/or epistemically successful.
After a Master’s Degree in Philosophy at the University of Milan, Giada joined the Philosophy Department at University of Edinburgh as a PhD Student. Giada has recently submitted her PhD Thesis entitled ‘Evidential Externalism’, which evaluates how varieties of Evidential Externalism relate to a cluster of topics in contemporary epistemology, such as, the nature of second-order knowledge, the infallibilism-fallibilism debate, the relation between evidence and epistemic justification. Besides traditional analytic epistemology, she is also interested in Social and Legal Epistemology, as well as Philosophy of Science.
When she is not doing philosophy, she sings, she plays piano (whenever she finds one), and she reads novels.
You can contact Giada at giada DOT fratantonio AT helsinki DOT fi
Jaakko Hirvelä is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki and joined the project in the fall of 2018. He gained his PhD from the University of Helsinki in March 2018. He specializes in epistemology but his philosophical interests are broad, ranging from philosophy of mind to meta-ethics. At the moment he is working on the nature of epistemic competences.
When he is not doing philosophy he spends time with his daughter, brews beer, practices historical European martial arts and enjoys the Finnish nature.
You can contact Jaakko at jaakko DOT hirvela AT helsinki DOT fi
Daniel joined the project as a postdoctoral researcher in 2019, having just finished a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Philosophical Research at UNAM in Mexico City. Before that, he obtained his doctorate from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He works on the border between descriptive and normative philosophy, on how our abilities and limitations determine what we ought to do and believe. He is especially interested in these questions in relation to our attitudes, specifically in how belief and requirements to believe resemble and differ from our other attitudes (desire, admiration, etc.) and requirements to have them; and he's also interested in how these requirements resemble and differ from requirements to act. As part of this project, he's also thinking about how we talk about and express our attitudes. Finally, he has longstanding interests in conversation and its norms – essentially, in what a helpful interlocutor would do.
Outside of philosophy he is way too occupied with the politics of a lot of countries, but especially of the United States; he also likes traveling, sometimes on bikes, and dogs.
You can contact him at druckd AT gmail DOT com.
Niall Paterson worked in the project as a post doctoral researcher in 2019.
Carlotta Pavese, Duke University: "Reasoning and Presuppositions"
Christoph Kelp, University of Glasgow: "Agent Functionalism"
Mona Simion, University of Glasgow: "Evidence and Defeat"
Susanna Siegel, Harvard University: "Proto-Confidences and the interface between experience and credence"
Martin Smith, University of Edinburgh: "The Hardest Paradox for Closure"
Nick Hughes, Durham University: “Are the Requirements of Rationality Immune to Rational Doubt?"
Lilian O'Brien, University of Helsinki: "Practical Standards and Epistemic Access"
Lisa Miracchi, University of Pennsylvania: "A Knowledge-First Virtue Approach to the Basing Relation"
Jim Pryor, New York University: "Justification Closure and Epistemic Dilemmas"
Patrick Shirreff, University of Tartu: "Types of Memory and Constraints on Knowledge"
Eva Schmidt, University of Zürich: “Pragmatic Encroachment With Reasons”
Kurt Sylvan, University of Southampton: “Respect for the Truth and the Normativity of Epistemic Rationality”
Clayton Littlejohn, King’s College London: “n-1 guilty men”
Teemu Toppinen, University of Helsinki: “Still Puzzled by Pure Normative Deference”
Matti Eklund, University of Uppsala: “Alternative Concepts, Realism, and Relativism”
Kate Nolfi, University of Vermont: “Non-Factive Knowledge”
Antti Kauppinen, University of Helsinki: ”Fittingness and Normativity”