Santiago Zabala is an EU citizen born in 1975. He was raised in Rome, Vienna, and Geneva. He is now living in Berlin. He was first educated at the International Schools of Vienna and Geneva, where he obtained his Full International Baccalaureate in 1995. He then went on to study philosophy at the University of Turin. In 2002 he obtained his M.A. there with a thesis (published in English and Italian) under the supervision of Gianni Vattimo and in 2006 his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome. In November 2007 he was awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship by Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.


During the past years he has been invited to conferences by many institutions, including Georgetown University, John Hopkins University, the New School (New York), Université de Montreal, University of Rome La Sapienza, University of Rome Roma Tre, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Universität Potsdam, University of Deusto in Bilbao, and the University of Girona. He taught in Gianni Vattimo’s theoretical philosophy seminars during the academic years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 at the University of Turin. He is a member of the APA (American Philosophical Association), the CPA (Canadian Philosophical Association), and SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy). He is currently a Humboldt Fellow at Potsdam University Institute of Philosophy.


He is the author of The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat (2004) and editor of G. Vattimo’s Art’s Claim to Truth (2008) and Nihilism and Emancipation (2004) and Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo's The Future of Religion (2005), all published by Columbia University Press and translated into several languages. His forthcoming book, The Remains of Being: Ontology after Heidegger, will be released from Columbia University Press in 2009 and is being translated into Spanish (Bellaterra Publishers) and Italian (Meltemi Publishers). He also edited Weakening Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Professor Gianni Vattimo for the philosopher’s seventieth birthday in 2006, with contributions from Umberto Eco, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Jean-Luc Nancy, Teresa Oñate, Fernando Savater, Pier Aldo Rovatti, Paolo Flores d'Arcais, Hugh J. Silverman, Nancy Frankenberry, Rüdiger Bubner, Jack Miles, Carmelo Dotolo, Wolfgang Welsch, Jean Grondin, James Risser, Manfred Frank, Reiner Schürmann, Jeffrey Perl, Giacomo Marramao, Santiago Zabala, and Gianni Vattimo. This book was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2007 and is now being translated into Italian (Garzanti Publisher) and Spanish (Anthropos Publisher).


He collaborates with the journals Common Knowledge, Aquinas, Books in Canada, Sensus Communis, Iride, Filosofia Politica, and Claves de Razón Práctica. With Gianni Vattimo he is the series editor of the Davies Group Publishers Series Contemporary European Cultural Studies, of the Valter Casini Editore series Interpretazioni, of Transeuropa Publishers series Differenze, of the Zikkurat Publishers series Interpretazioni dal mondo, and of the Aliberti Publishers series Libri di Vattimo e Zabala. With Alberto Martinengo and Mario Cedrini he is editing The Complete Works of Gianni Vattimo for Meltemi.