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I completed my PhD in 2017 at the Law Faculty of the University of Cambridge. My doctoral dissertation on legal personhood was awarded the Yorke Prize and the Salje Medal. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. The book was described as “an instant classic” in the Modern Law Review, and the journal Revus devoted a symposium to it in 2021. It has been translated into Spanish and a Korean translation is in the works.

My work on legal personhood has been cited in four US animal personhood trials, including two amicus curiae briefs by Harvard professor Laurence Tribe (links: [1] [2] [3]).

In addition to legal personhood, my interests include animal law, rights theory and social ontology.

I am currently supervising a number of PhD students. My supervision resources are therefore somewhat limited. However, I am willing to discuss these matters with potential students. Please feel free to contact me if you are interested: visa.kurki@helsinki.fi.

I am Vice President of both the Finnish Legal Philosophy Society (Finnish IVR) and Finnish Society for Animal Rights Law. I’ve served as an editor of the Finnish law journal Oikeus and as the Editor-in-Chief of the Global Journal of Animal Law.

Apart from my academic occupations, I am an avid member of the Finnish sauna community. In the autumn, I pick mushrooms and in the winter, I do cross-country skiing and winter swimming. I also play computer games (mostly grand strategies and RPGs).

My name is pronounced more or less like if it was Spanish, though with an English “v”: VEE-sah KOOR-kee.