Dr Heikki Antero Ossian Ikaheimo

My Expertise

Personhood, interpersonal recognition, social ontology, social critique, and their applications in areas such as social work, inclusive education, disability studies, robotics and intercultural relations.

Keywords

Fields of Research (FoR)

Social Philosophy, History of Philosophy and History of Ideas

SEO tags

Expanding Knowledge

Biography

Heikki Ikäheimo has a PhD in Philosophy from University of Jyväskylä in Finland (2003), where he also worked as Assistant and Senior Assistant in Philosophy between 1997 and 2005. As post doc he spent three years in 2005-8 at University of Frankfurt (http://www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de/english/). Heikki came to Australia in 2008 to take up a Macquarie University Research Fellowship and moved to UNSW in 2012. He was Australian Research Fellow in 2011-16 with an Australian Research Council Discovery Project 'The Social Ontology of Personhood - A Recognition-theoretical Account' together with partner investigators from Finland, Germany and Italy. Heikki has been visiting scholar at Westphälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (2000-2001 and 2015) and at Paris Nanterre (2014). He has given invited lectures, keynotes and talks in Australia, Austria, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

Heikki's research areas include Hegel, German idealism, theories of recognition, intersubjectivity, subjectivity, personhood, the human life-form, social ontology, critical social philosophy, and applied philosophy. He is best known through his work on the theme of recognition (Anerkennung), including the monographs Recognition and the Human Life-form: Beyond Identity and Difference (Routledge 2022) and Anerkennung (De Gruyter 2014), as well as the edited collections Recognition and Ambivalence (Columbia University Press 2021), Handbuch Anerkennung (Springer 2021) and Recognition and Social Ontology (Brill 2011). Heikki's is currently working on a co-authored monograph The Social Ontology of Personhood together with Arto Laitinen, Michael Quante, and Italo Testa.

From 2022 Heikki is Chief Investigator with Karen Fisher (UNSW), Sally Robinson (Flinders University) and Claire Spivakovsky (University of Melbourne) in an Australian Research Council Linkage Project 'Confronting everyday harms: preventing abuse of people with disability' (LP210200536). The project involves a large number of industry partners in the disability sector providing disability services in three Australian states. Its aim is to develop a new approach to enhancing the quality of life and identifying and preventing abuse of people with disablities by looking at relationships between them and their support workers, as well as the institutional settings in which these relationships happen, from a recognition-theoretical perspective.

Heikki is founding member of the editorial board of Journal of Social Ontology, as well as a founding member of the International Social Ontology Society and the Australian Hegel Society.

Heikki offers higher degree supervision in his research areas.

Many of Heikki's publications can be downloaded at http://unsw.academia.edu/HeikkiIkaheimo

My Grants

ARC Linkage Project 'Confronting everyday harms: preventing abuse of people with disability'

Purpose: The findings of the Disability Royal Commission necessitate new approaches to prevent violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Framed by recognition theory, this project proposes empirical research with young people with cognitive disability, using a new concept of "everyday harms" in their paid relationships. The results will inform early responses to poor quality interactions in disability support. The strategic alliances with the government, industry and community partners will develop a practice framework to prevent everyday harms and the escalation to abuse, and to promote safety and wellbeing. The research has policy benefits for capacity-building in the sector to act on the rights and voices of people with disability.

Grant Term: 11-Apr-2022 to 31-Dec-2024

Value (AUD): $466,852.00 (plus Linkage partner contributions)

My Qualifications

PhD in philosophy

Formal qualification as teacher in philosophy and ethical education at secondary and tertiary levels (Finnish law on teacher qualifications, no 452/96 § 1 moment 2)

My Awards

Australian Research Fellow 2011-2016

Macquarie University Research Fellow 2008-2011

Academy of Finland Research Doctor 2005-2008

My Research Supervision

Areas of supervision

Hegel, recognition, personhood, social ontology, critical social philosophy, applied philosophy.

Currently supervising

Paul Tomaszewski. Scientia PhD thesis 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Complexities of complaining for people with intellectual disability and their paid supports'.

Carleton Christensen. PhD thesis 'The Problem of Essential Indexicality and Its Relevance for Theories of Subjectivity'.

Vanessa Arapko. Masters thesis 'The Conception of Communism in Karl Marx’s Economic Manuscripts of 1861-65'.