Nadia Urbinati (born 26 January 1955) is an Italian political theorist. She is the Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Professor of Political Theory at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

Personal life

In 1989, she received her Ph.D. at

European University Institute The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral research-intensive university and an intergovernmental organisation with juridical personality, established by its founding member states to contribu ...

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, Italy. She is also a naturalized US citizen.

Academic work

Urbinati specializes in modern and contemporary political thought and the democratic and anti-democratic traditions. She teaches at Columbia University where she co-chaired the Columbia University Faculty Seminar on Political and Social Thought. She is one of the longest-serving scholars of populism in modern academia. With

Andrew Arato Andrew Arato ( ; born 22 August 1944) is a critical theorist and a professor of Political and Social Theory in the Department of Sociology at The New School. He is best known for his influential book ''Civil Society and Political Theory'', coa ...

, she was the co-editor of ''Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory''. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Foundation Reset Dialogues on Civilization. Prior to Columbia, she was a member of the School of Social Sciences of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

in Princeton, New Jersey and was a Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. In Italy, Urbinati is permanent visiting professor at Pisa's Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e Perfezionamento Sant'Anna and has taught at

Bocconi University Bocconi University or Università Bocconi (formally known in Italian language, Italian as ''Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi'' – Luigi Bocconi Commercial University) is a private university in Milan, Italy. The university is consistently ...

in Milan,

Sciences Po Sciences Po () or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of ''grande école'' and the legal status of . The university's unde ...

in Paris, and the

University of Campinas The University of Campinas (), commonly called Unicamp, is a public research university in the state of São Paulo (state), São Paulo, Brazil. Established in 1962, Unicamp was designed from scratch as an integrated Research institute, researc ...

in Brazil.

Awards

In 2008, Italian president

Giorgio Napolitano Giorgio Napolitano (; 29 June 1925 – 22 September 2023) was an Italian politician who served as President of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first to be re-elected to the office. In office for 8 years and 244 days, he was the longest-serving pre ...

made Urbinati a Commander of the

Order of Merit of the Italian Republic The Order of Merit of the Italian Republic () is the most senior Italian order of merit. It was established in 1951 by the second President of Italy, President of the Italian Republic, Luigi Einaudi. The highest-ranking honour of the Republi ...

"for her contribution to the study of democracy and the diffusion of Italian liberal and democratic thought abroad." She is the winner of the 2008–09 Lenfest/Columbia Distinguished Faculty Award and she received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for the best book in liberal and democratic theory for Mill on Democracy.

Bibliography

Urbinati is the author of a number of journal articles and books, including: *''Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy'' (Harvard University Press, 2019) *''The Tyranny of the Moderns'' (Yale University Press 2015) *''Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the People'' (Harvard University Press, 2014) *''Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy'' (University of Chicago Press, 2006) *''Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government'' (University of Chicago Press, 2002) Urbinati is also a political columnist for Italian newspapers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Urbinati, Nadia Living people European University Institute alumni Princeton University faculty Columbia University faculty Italian women political scientists American women political scientists American political scientists Academic staff of Bocconi University Academic staff of the State University of Campinas Academic staff of Sciences Po Academic staff of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic Naturalized citizens of the United States Italian emigrants to the United States Institute for Advanced Study people American women academics 21st-century American women 1955 births