Phd in PHILOSOPHY

email: orietta.ombrosi@uniroma1.it
phone: 06.49917314
building: Dipartimento di Filosofia (Villa Mirafiori)
room: 204

Orietta Ombrosi graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bologna in 1995 with a thesis on E. Levinas, initially supervised by Prof. E. Melandri. She was awarded several Italian and French research and study grants that enabled her to study and work in Paris from 1997 to 2004. In 2002, she obtained her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Université Paris X–Nanterre, under the supervision of Professors C. Chalier and M. Abensour.
She continued her research with a two-years postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah in Paris. During her time in France, she taught at the Université de la Méditerranée (Aix-en-Provence and Marseille) in the 2002–2003 academic year, within the Department of Philosophy, as an Attachée Temporaire de l’Enseignement et de la Recherche (ATER). She also directed annual seminars (with M. Abensour in 2000–2001 at the MEDEM Center in Paris), and obtained the national French qualification as Maîtresse de Conférences in Philosophy in 2004, renewed in 2008. She has delivered lectures at several prestigious institutions and universities in Paris, including the Centre Pompidou, Sorbonne, ENS, MAHJ, Nanterre Université, INALCO, and the Mémorial de la Shoah. At the latter, she presented her first book, Le crépuscule de la raison. W. Benjamin, T. W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer et E. Levinas à l’épreuve de la Catastrophe (Hermann, Paris 2007), later translated into English (Academic Studies Press, 2012) and Italian (Giuntina, 2014).
In 2005, she was selected as part of the Italy’s 'Brain Gain' Program, promoted by the Ministry of Education, University and Research, and taught Philosophical Anthropology and Moral Philosophy as a fixed-term Researcher (contract position) at the Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna, from 2005 to 2009.
In December 2010, she was appointed Ricercatrice Confermata (Senior Researcher) in Moral Philosophy (M-FIL-03) at the Department of Philosophy, Sapienza University of Rome, where she currently teaches holding the chairs of Philosophical Anthropology (undergraduate program in Philosophy) and Contemporary Moral French Philosophy (graduate program).
In the Fall Quarter of 2019 (September–December), she served as the Joyce Z. Greenberg Visiting Professor in Jewish Philosophy at the Divinity School, University of Chicago.
Promoted to Associate Professor in 2019, she was granted National Scientific Qualification for Full Professorship in Moral Philosophy (Academic Discipline 11/C-3) in 2023 and in Theoretical Philosophy (11/C-1) in 2025. Since 2018, she has been a faculty member of the Ph.D. Program in Philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome, with a focus on the ethical-political curriculum, and since 2025, she has been co-responsible (with C. Adorisio and G. Licata) for the permanent seminar Da’at: Memory, History and Jewish Philosophy. As of 2024, she is member of the National Interest Ph.D. Program in Peace Studies, for the curriculum Identities, Memories, Religions, and Peace.
She is involved in numerous national and international research groups. She is the Principal Investigator of a project selected and promoted by the 2022 National Interest and Relevant Program (PRIN 2022) on Judaism and Gender Difference: Violence, Human Rights, and the Critique of Ideologies in the Thought of Contemporary Women Philosophers. She is an integrated researcher with the Institut de Recherches Philosophiques (IrePH, Université Paris Nanterre), associate researcher at the Centre International d’Étude de la Philosophie Française Contemporaine (PhilOfr – ENS, Paris), and a member in the project Jewish Thought and Contemporary Philosophy, led by Prof. J. Cohen at the Newman Centre for the Study of Religion, University College Dublin. She is also a member of the scientific board of the Interuniversity Research Centre Filosofia e Letteratura (FLECIR) and of the Italian Network of Universities for Peace (RUNIPACE), contributing to the group on Peace Education in Universities.
Since 2022, she has served as Academic Coordinator for International Mobility (CAM) and Academic Students Mobility Officer (RAM) for the degree programs at the Department of Philosophy. As of 2024, she co-coordinates (with Prof. F. Verde) the Double Degree Master’s Program (with Sorbonne 1 Panthéon) in Contemporary Ethics and Ancient Conceptions (ECCA). Since 2015, she has initiated bilateral Erasmus+ agreements with various institutions: École Normale Supérieure (Paris), Université de Strasbourg, Université Paris Nanterre, INALCO (Paris), Université de Nantes, Université de Caen, Université de Bordeaux, University of Osnabruck and University College Dublin. She is also responsible for bilateral OverSeas agreements with National Sun Yan Sen University (Kaohsiung, Taiwan), Bar-Ilan University (Tel Aviv, Israel), and Saint Paul University (Ottawa, Canada).
She is currently a member of the editorial board of Filosofia Morale / Moral Philosophy, the official journal of the Italian Society for Moral Philosophy (SIFM), and of the scientific committees of the journals Paradosso (Il Poligrafo, Padua), Studi Jaspersiani (Orthotes, Naples), and Illusio (Le Bord de l’eau, Caen). She was co-founder and Associate Editor (2010–2017) of Bamidbar. Journal for Jewish Thought and Philosophy (Passagen, Vienna), and served on the editorial board of Théologiques (Université de Montréal, until 2015). Since 2019, she has been involved in the editorial planning of the Saggi. Scienza e Filosofia series (Donzelli Editore, Rome).
She has organized numerous conferences and seminars both in Italy (Bologna and Rome) and abroad (Paris, Strasbourg, Antwerp), and has participated as speaker in approximately sixty academic conferences across Europe and beyond.
In addition to the aforementioned monograph, her most recent publications include Le bestiaire philosophique de Jacques Derrida (PUF, Paris 2022; forthcoming in Italian with Donzelli, Rome, 2025) and L’umano ritrovato. Saggio su Emmanuel Levinas (Marietti, Milan 2010; new edition forthcoming in 2025). She has also edited several collective volumes and journal issues, including: Jaspers e il femminile (with S. Tarantino, Studi Jaspersiani, forthcoming in 2025); Le sfide del perdono (with L. Sanò, Paradosso, 2021); Il nucleare, una questione scientifica e filosofica dal 1945 a oggi (Italian–English edition, Mimesis, Jaspersiana, Milan 2020); Derrida–Levinas. An Alliance Awaiting the Political (with R. Zagury-Orly, Mimesis International, 2018); Ebraismo “al femminile”. Percorsi diversi di intellettuali ebree del Novecento (Giuntina, Florence 2017); Tra Torah e Sophia. Orizzonti e frontiere della Filosofia ebraica (Marietti, Milan 2011); and the critical edition of Simone Weil’s La colonizzazione e il destino dell’Europa (Marietti, Milan 2009). A full list of her articles and essays is available under “Publications.”
Her main research interests lie in Moral Philosophy and Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary French Philosophy (Existentialism, Phenomenology, Deconstruction), Theoretical Philosophy, Twentieth-century Jewish Philosophy, and Critical Theory.
She is also the author of philosophy books for children.
She is the mother of two children, a son and a daughter.