Virpi Mäkinen is Senior Lecturer of theological and social ethics in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki. She holds a title of Docent in theological ethics and philosophy of religion at the same university. As PI, she leads an academy research project "At the Frontiers of Humanity: Extreme Necessity in the History of Ethics, Law and Politics, 300–1600" (2020–2024). Mäkinen is a member of Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and acts as a member in several editorial and academic boards in Finland and other countries.

Mäkinen has been a visiting scholar in Toronto (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies) and in USA (Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University), Postodoctoral Researcher and Academy Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland), and Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She has led an academy research project “Rights and Needs in Medieval and Early Modern Politics” (2012–2015) and acted as a Vice Director in two Centre of Excellence (funded by the Academy of Finland): “Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics” (2008–2013) and “Reason and Religious Recognition” (2014–2019). In both projects she also led research team in medieval and/or early modern thought.

In her research, Mäkinen has focused on the early history of individual rights, especially property and minority rights; see e.g. Property Rights in the Late Medieval Discussion on Franciscan Poverty (Peeters 2001); Transformations in Medieval and Early Modern Rights Discourse (Springer 2005, co-ed. Petter Korkman), Lutheran Reformation and the Law (Brill 2006), and Rights at the Margins (Brill 2020, co-ed. Jonathan Robinson, Pamela Slotte and Heikki Haara).