Nadia Urbinati (Ph.D., European University Institute, Florence, 1989).

Professor Urbinati is a political theorist who specializes in modern political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She co-chaired the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought (1996 to 1999; fall 2004) and founded and chaired the Workshop on Politics, Religion and Human Rights (2004). She is co-editor with Andrew Arato of the journal Constellations.

Professor Urbinati is the author of Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press 2006), and of Mill on Democracy: from the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago Press, 2002; Italian translation by Laterza 2006), which received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize as the best book in liberal and democratic theory published in 2002. She is co-editor with Alex Zakaras of John Stuart Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge University Press 2007); has published several books in Italian, and edited Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism (Princeton University Press, 1994) and Piero Gobetti, On Liberal Revolution (Yale University Press, 2000). She co-edited Le socialisme libéral. Une anthologie: Europe-Ëtats-Unis with Monique Canto-Sperber (Ėditions Esprit, 2003; Italian translation by Marsilio/Reset 2004). In addition to book chapters, she has published articles and book reviews in 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, and Critique. She is currently completing a monograph on the ideology of antidemocracy.

Before coming to Columbia, Professor Urbinati served as visiting professor at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and as a lecturer at Princeton University. She also taught at the University UNICAMP in Brazil and is a visiting professor at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant'Anna of Pisa (Italy). She has been a member of the School of Social Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and of the Department of Political Studies of the University of Turin (Italy). She has been appointed as a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow for the academic year 2007-08 in the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University.

Research interests: Democratic theory; anti-democratic thought; theories of Representation and Sovereignty; ancient and modern political thought; theory of resistance and consent.