I defended my doctoral thesis at the University of Cambridge In 1977. My doctoral dissertation focuses on Homer’s lyrical poetry. It examines the question of authorship from the perspective of European cultural history, and the even more mysterious question of originality in poetry, which was the subject of heated debate during the Renaissance, Baroque period and Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press published my work, entitled Homer’s Original Genius, Eighteenth-Century Notions of the Early Greek Epic (1688-1798) in 1979, and the latest paperback edition is from 2010.

Immediately after finishing my doctoral thesis, I moved from England to Oulu, where I was assistant professor and acting professor at the University of Oulu between 1977 and 1981. Since then my career has contained plenty of periods, of varying length, as a visiting scholar, lecturer and expert at different European and American universities, as well as participation in international conferences. I have also supervised a large number of theses and doctoral dissertations. My research career has thus been full of travel, roaming and voyages of discovery – both literally and figuratively: encounters with people and experts, tracing facts and searching for the essential. I was lucky to find scholars and teachers in different countries who have retained this true scholarly passion.