Professor Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oulu in 2018 and served as Chair of the Department of the History of Sciences and Ideas from 2020 to 2022. He was Director of the Eudaimonia Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Oulu from 2022 to 2026. He has held academic positions at Durham, Leiden, Hull, Hradec Králové and Cambridge, and has given invited lectures internationally. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Philosophy of History from 2017 to 2021.
His monograph Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography (Palgrave, 2015) received the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography Award for Best Monograph in Philosophy of Historiography in 2016. His forthcoming monograph, Doing, Knowing and Getting it Right: Methodologism as Pragmatism, will be published by Cambridge University Press.
Professor Kuukkanen specialises in the history and philosophy of science, pragmatism, and the philosophy of historiography, including the philosophy of the historiography of science. He received an Oskari Huttunen Fellowship for his stay at Clare Hall. During his year at Clare Hall, he will develop themes from his forthcoming book in a project entitled Methodologism: Historical Foundations and Contemporary Applications. The project focuses on a pragmatist theory of concepts, normativity and the historical grounding of methodologism.
Select publications
Selected Books:
- Doing, Knowing and Getting it Right: Methodologism as Pragmatism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026.
- Philosophy of History for Twenty-first Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2020.
- Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Scientific Articles:
- “Kuhn, Progress and Knowing-How: An Epistemological-Functional Account of Scientific Progress.” In Y. Shang (ed.), Rethinking Thomas Kuhn’s Legacy. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Cham: Springer, 2024, 77–101.
- “Pluralism in Reasoning: How to Legitimate Material Inferences.” Synthese 202 (2023), 66.
- “Truth, Incoherence and the Evolution of Science.” In B. Wray (ed.), Interpreting Kuhn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 202–222.
- “Kuhn on Essentialism and the Causal Theory of Reference.” Philosophy of Science 77 (2010), 544–565.
- “Making Sense of Conceptual Change.” History and Theory 47 (2008), 351–372.
Select awards
- 2027 – The Osk. Huttunen Foundation Fellowship (Clare Hall, Cambridge)
- 2016 – ICHTH Book Prize (Best Monograph in Philosophy of Historiography), International Commission for the
History and Theory of Historiography - 2013 – Marie Curie Fellowship (EURIAS), Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
- 1998 – ASLA–Fulbright Scholarship
Further links
The Centre for Philosophical Studies of History: https://www.oulu.fi/en/university/faculties-and-units/faculty-humanities/centre-for-philosophical-studies-history
