After defending her PhD thesis at the University of Helsinki with the thesis Ancient Philosophers on Principles of Knowledge and Argumentation in 2001, Miira Tuominen has worked in different academic environments mainly in Finland, at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Study and University of Jyväskylä as well as abroad at the University of Chicago, Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, University of Stockholm, and Humboldt University/Topoi Excellence Cluster in Berlin.

She has published mainly on ancient philosophy, especially on themes of knowledge or cognition and theory of argumentation. Of these, perhaps the most important ones are: ‘Receptive Reason: Alexander of Aphrodisias on Material Intellect’ (Phronesis 55, 2010), ‘Back to Posterior Analytics 2.19: Aristotle on the Knowledge of the Principles’ (Apeiron 43/2-3, 2010),  ‘Reason, Experience, and the Knowldege of the Principles in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics 2.19’ (in Aristotle on Logic and Nature ed. by J-I. Lindén 2019), and Aristotle on the Role of the Predicables in Dialectical Disputations with Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 43, 2012). She has also published two monographs Apprehension and Argument: Ancient Theories of the Starting Points for Knowledge (2007) and Ancient Commentators on Plato and Aristotle (2009).

Recently, she has been working on Porphyry’s treatise on abstinence from animate beings (tr. G. Clark, On Abstinence from Killing Animals 2000) and written a monograph and several articles on it, most of which are in the process of being published. Other recent publications include, for example, ‘Philoponus’ in Oxford Bibliographies (ed. by R. Scodel, 2020) and ’Late Antiquity: Science in the Philosophical Schools’ in Cambridge History of Science (vol. 1, ed. By L. Taub and A. Jones, 2018).

She is also the editor of the series Synthese New Historical Library and the leader of the project The Nature and Moral Status of Non-Human Animals in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Kone foundation, 2019-22).

Miira Tuominen’s research plans include an article on animal intelligence in Aristotle in the zoological works, a short monograph on knowledge as it is explained in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and why it eludes many of the crucial classifications of modern epistemology as well as an article on Plato’s Symposium on the nature erôs.

Her main teaching area is ancient philosophy and she also teaches the history of philosophy more generally.