His Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki in 1997. Before his appointment as the Professor of Political Thought at the University of Jyväskylä in 2010, he worked as a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. His research areas include continental political theory, history of political thought, conceptual history, and political theology. He has a long-term interest in Carl Schmitt’s political thought, but his publications also include articles on such late modern continental authors as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt. Currently, he is writing a book on the history of the concept of conscience in the Western tradition.
Articles on Foucault, Agamben and bio-politics:
– Mika Ojakangas, “Michel Foucault and the Enigmatic Origins of Bio-politics and Governmentality.” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 25, no. 1, 2012, 1-14.
– Mika Ojakangas, “On the Pauline Roots of Biopolitics: Apostle Paul in Company with Foucault and Agamben.” The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. Vol. 11, no. 1, 2010, pp. 92-110.
http://www.jcrt.org/archives/11.1/ojakangas.pdf
– Mika Ojakangas, “Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power: Agamben and Foucault.” Foucault Studies, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 5-28.
http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/view/856