Joni Petteri Puranen, PhD

Description of research and teaching

I am a Finnish philosopher working at the intersection of phenomenology, embodiment, and medical humanities. I currently serve as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, where I work in the Phenomenology of Loneliness project (2025 August to 2027 November) exploring the constitutive elements of being with others.

In philosophy, my areas of expertise encompass currents in contemporary European thought (Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy), phenomenolological psychopathology and in particular the role of embodiment in mental health. I have also analysed the sonorous materiality of reading in my research. 

I received my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Jyväskylä in April 2024 with the degree eximia cum laude approbatur. My dissertation, Attention and Bodily Experience, develops a phenomenological account of how bodily being shapes attentive experience. Before my doctoral work, I completed an MSocSci in philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä (2016) and a BA in philosophy at the University of Helsinki (2015).

I am currently (2025 November) working on a text on experiences of longing, which demonstrates how the infinite withdrawal of my beloved is not simply the mark of absence but the very mode through which their withdrawn presence insists – how it is at once dreadful and consoling, exact and undeniable.