Ylwa Sjölin Wirling

Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Gothenburg


Ylwa Sjölin Wirling studied philosophy and literature at Lund University, where she obtained her BA and
MA degrees. She received her PhD in theoretical philosophy from the University of Gothenburg in 2019.
She held a postdoc at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and an international postdoc
funded by the Swedish Research Council, jointly hosted by the University of Manchester and the University
of Gothenburg. She was promoted to docent in 2022.

Most of Wirling’s research concerns epistemology, broadly construed. She has worked on epistemological
issues pertaining to modality, scientific models, philosophical inquiry, and abstract objects, as well as on
questions about epistemic value and epistemic normativity. Her papers have appeared in top-ranked philo-
sophy journals including Analysis, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ergo, and Philosophical
Studies. She has also co-edited two volumes (for Springer and Routledge) and has contributed several entries
to handbooks in epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Wirling’s Pro Futura project is titled Between Knowledge and Ignorance: Epistemic Possibilities in Inquiry.
In a nutshell, it explores the role that epistemic possibility judgments – about what might be the case, as far
as one knows – do and should play at various stages of an inquiry, and seeks to develop an account of epi-
stemic possibility that can help us better understand the nature, value, and epistemology of such judgments.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2024-25.