Simona Aimar is a Lecturer of Philosophy at University College London (UCL). She has been a visiting scholar at NYU, the Harvard Centre for Hellenic Studies, and the Seeger Princeton Centre for Hellenic Studies. Her work focuses on metaphysics and semantics, in both ancient and contemporary debates. At the moment, her biggest project is a reconstruction of Aristotle’s metaphysics of modality (notions like necessity and possibility). Further projects include the metaphysics of causation, causal claims, and Aristotle’s notion of technē.

Abilities crop up in all aspects of her work. For Aristotle, abilities are examples of powers (dunameis). Thus they play a most central role in his metaphysics of modality, as well as in his ethics and philosophy of mind. Within the contemporary debate, abilities are relevant to Simona’s work especially when she is thinking about ability ascriptions and the metaphysics and gradability of powers. When time allows, she also thinks about how to connect her work with issues in political and social philosophy – it turns out that abilities are often central there too.