Nadia Urbinati

Nadia Urbinati (PhD, European University Institute, Florence, 1989) is a political theorist interested in modern and contemporary political thought, democratic and anti-democratic traditions. Currently the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at Columbia University, she has taught and conducted research at New York University, University of Pennsylvania, the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University, Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil, as well as Scuola Superiore de Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant'Anna of Pisa and Università degli Studi di Torino in Italy. An award-winning author of numerous books including the most recent Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Harvard, 2019), Urbinati also co-edits the journal Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory. 

Urbinati is the author of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (Chicago, 2006) and Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government, the editor of Carlo Rosselli's Liberal Socialism (Princeton, 2017) and Piero Gobetti's On Liberal Revolution (Yale, 2000), co-editor of Le socialism libéral: Une anthologie; Europe-États-Unis (Esprit, 2003), John Stuart Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge, 2007), A Cosmopolitanism of Nations: Giuseppe Mazzini's Writings on Democracy, Nation Building, and International Relations (Princeton, 2010), and Condorcet: Political Writing (Cambridge: 2012). Amongst her books in Italian are Le civili libertá: Positivismo e liberalismo nell'Italia unita (Venezia marsilio, 1990), prefaced by Norberto Bobbio, Individualismo democratico: Emerson, Dewey e la cultura politica americana (Donzelli, 1997), and Ai confini della democrazia: opportunità e rischi dell'universalismo democratico (Donzelli, 2007).

In addition to book chapters, she has published articles and book reviews in several international scholarly journals: Political Theory, Ethics, Constellations, Philosophical Forum, Dissent, Review of Metaphysics, The European Journal of Political Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Redescriptions, Rivista di filosofia, Lua Nova, Revista Política & Sociedade, Il Mulino, European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de sociologie/Europäisches Archiv für soziologie, Review of Metaphysics; Bryn Mawr Classical Review, and Critique.

Within and beyond the walls of academia, she has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation Reset Dialogues on Civilization-Istanbul Seminars, co-chair of the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought, and co-founder of the Workshop on Politics, Religion and Human Rights. She participates in public debates as an editorial contributor of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and author of many articles in the culture section of the Italian newspaper I/ Sole24ore.

Urbinati has received numerous awards for her contributions to political theory and interventions in public discourses. In 2004, her book Mill on Democracy received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002. She is the winner of the 2008-9 Lenfest/Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award. And in 2008, the President of the Italian Republic awarded Professor Urbinati the Commendatore della Repubblica (Commander of the Italian Republic) "for her contribution to the study of democracy and the diffusion of Italian liberal and democratic thought abroad."