PhD
Post doc Researcher

I am currently a Førsteamanuensis (equivalent to an associate professor) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Ålesund. I was a Post doc at the University of Lisbon in 2023-24 after teaching at the University of Oslo and the University of Bergen in 2022. I completed my PhD at the University of Arizona in 2021, with a dissertation on character virtue in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics. Before that, I studied at St Olaf College for a BA in mathematics and in philosophy and taught mathematics in a rural Kentucky secondary school.

My current research focuses on Aristotle’s two ethical works, the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics, from both philosophical and philological perspectives. In my dissertation, I argued that in the Eudemian Ethics, habitual action forms character through experiences of pleasure and pain and that thorough deliberation aims both at mundane goals set by desire and at a contemplative life of virtue. In a side project, I have produced a stylometric analysis of Aristotle’s ethical works, updating Anthony Kenny’s work from 1978. I have broad interests in ancient philosophy, as well as in contemporary virtue ethics, environmental ethics, and care ethics.

Personal website: www.ntnu.no/ansatte/bjorn.s.wastvedt