At the University of Helsinki I have followed the classical path of researching the history of philosophy and political thought shown by scholars such as Matti Viikari, Simo Knuuttila and Juha Sihvola. This includes certain concrete steps: like many of my study mates, I became interested in philosophy and political thinking at the beginning of my studies.

My doctoral thesis supervisors, Markku Peltonen and Kari Saastamoinen, guided me towards my central research questions. A part of my doctoral training happened at the University of Cambridge; Istvan Hont, who had a love-hate relationship with his students, also taught at Cambridge at that time.

My study was focused on the 18th century Enlightenment period, on the thinking of Bernard Mandeville and David Hume and especially the question of the relationship between human sociality, anti-sociality and the basic structures of society. John Robertson, professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Cambridge, acted as my opponent.

As a post-doc researcher, I spent some years at the University of St. Andrews as a Leverhulme Fellow at the Department of Philosophy. I published a monograph at Oxford and was also able to enjoy time at a research collegium. I felt I had passed a certain milestone on the path when a panel on my book was organised for the whole congress at the annual meeting of the Hume Society in Stockholm in the summer of 2015.

The monograph, which was heralded as an important work, is significant today and most likely tomorrow for humanities scholars.