Alessandro Ferrara (born 1953 in Trieste) is an Italian philosopher, currently professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and former president of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. He also teaches legal theory at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome. Studies Ferrara graduated in philosophy in Italy (1975) and later, as a Harkness Fellow, received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1984). He conducted post-doctoral research in Munich and Frankfurt with Jürgen Habermas as a Von Humboldt Fellow and later at Berkeley again (1989), leading to the publication of his first book, Modernity and Authenticity. Academic life Assistant professor in sociology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" between 1984 and 1998, then associate professor in sociology at the University of Parma between 1998 and 2002, since 2002 Ferrara is professor of political philosophy at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". Since 1991 he has been a director of the yearly conference on Philosophy and Social Science, initially held within the Interuniversity Centre of Dubrovnik, but since 1993 relocated to Prague, under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Science. Since 1990 he has been a founder and up to 2019 a director of the Seminario di Teoria Critica (Italy). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Association Reset – Dialogues of Civilizations. Ferrara is co-editor (with David Rasmussen) of the series Philosophy and Politics – Critical Explorations (Springer), and editorial consultant for a number of journals including Constellations, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Krisis, Balsa de la Medusa, Studies in Social & Political Thought, Berlin Journal of Critical Theory, and Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences. He has taught and lectured in various capacities in a number of universities and institutions, including Boston College, Harvard University, Columbia University, Rice University, Cardozo Law School, Yale University, New School for Social Research, University College London (UCL), Oxford University, the Chinese Academy of Social Science in Beijing, Sapienza University of Rome, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bilgi University and Sehir University in Istanbul, the National University of Singapore, and the Universities of California (at Berkeley), Paris – Sorbonne, Madrid, Chicago, Potsdam, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Exeter, Manchester, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, London, Exeter, Dublin, Belfast, Coimbra, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Berne, Bordeaux, Barcelona, Kraków, Lyon III, Tilburg, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Indore, Porto Alegre, Campo Grande, Catholic University of Chile