Nafsika Athanassoulis completed her PhD on moral luck at the University of Reading under the guidance of John Cottingham and Jonathan Dancy. She then took up a lectureship at Leeds University, jointly funded by the School of Philosophy and the School of Medicine. As well as teaching philosophy undergraduate and postgraduate students, she headed the Ethics Theme in the School of Medicine, overseeing 750 medical students and over 40 tutors from both medicine and philosophy. She was co-leader of the bidding team for the successful IDEAL CETL, which was based on the work of the Ethics Theme. She then took up a lectureship at Keele University as part of the innovative Centre for Professional Ethics. She contributed to the MA in Medical Ethics and Law, the largest Masters degree of its kind in Europe, she was Director of the MA in the Ethics of Palliative Care and part of the team that run the ground breaking Doctorate in Medical Ethics. During her career she has taught students in philosophy, medicine, biomedical sciences, pharmacy, law and engineering.

Her research interests are varied, for a full listing of her publications see her webpage and most of her papers can be accessed at PhilPapers and Academia.eduHer main publications on virtue ethics include her books Morality, Moral Luck and Responsibility (Palgrave 2005) and Virtue Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2013) and she has also published widely on the virtue ethical response to the challenge from personality psychology, developped a virtue ethical account of risk (with Allison Ross) and discussed how we should educate for virtue. She has also published on medical ethics and applied ethics.

Athanassoulis has a particular interest in pedagogy and especially in teaching philosophy to non-philosophy students. She has produced teaching materials for tutors and students for the Level 3 Extended Project on Perspectives on Science, which offers supportive Tutor and Student Notes on ethical topics in the sciences and the IDEAL CETL resource, Introduction to Ethical Thinking, which offers Tutor and Student Notes on 10 seminars introducing non-philosophy students to ethics. She has been awarded in excess of 2.7 million pounds in research funds for a variety of teaching projects.