I started my research career at the Institute of Medieval Philosophy (University of Porto), working on my Master thesis on the twelfth-century author Hugh of St. Victor. My supervisor was the then Director of the Institute, Professor Maria Cândida Pacheco. It was during this period that I attended the European Diploma of Medieval Studies course in Rome, where I spent most of my days in the Vatican Library, and my love for medieval philosophy grew.

Just after this time, I gave my first international paper at a conference organized in Jyväskylä. There I met Professor Simo Knuuttila, who later became the supervisor of my doctoral dissertation and one of the reasons I moved to Finland.

Years later I returned to Jyväskylä, this time working for the Centre of Excellence of the Academy of Finland Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics. This was the second of two CoEs led by Knuuttila, dealing with mind and cognition from a long historical perspective. It was essential to the development of the field, both at the national and international level. To belong to this group was extremely important, allowing me to adjust from an antiquarian approach to the history of philosophy characteristic of my formative years, to the more analytic approach of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. I still retain elements from both and take that as added value.

I continued working on the Augustinian tradition, now on the thirteenth century Archbishop Robert Kilwardby and his theory of the human soul. I became aware of how much Kilwardby was essential in understanding later views on perception, in trying to bring together the incompatible accounts of Aristotle and Augustine. In my book and in an article with Juhana Toivanen, I tried to spell out what was original in his contribution and realized that there was a story to tell about the historical development of a more active view of perception. Research on this took me first to a project at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and then to a European Research Council Starting Grant, which I have just begun.