About

Ursula Renz studied philosophy at the University of Zurich. From 1998-2002 she was a research assistant at the same university, from 2004-2007 she was an assistant and from 2007-8 a senior assistant at the Centre of Knowledge at ETH Zurich. She was a fellow at Yale University (2002-3), at the École Normale Supérieure Lyon (2003-4), at Harvard University (2013), at the University of Konstanz (2014-15), at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick (2019) and Fellow at the Human Abilities Research Group at Humboldt University and Freie Universität Berlin (2022-23). In 2008-9 she was Associate Professor at Roskilde University before being appointed to the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in 2009, where she worked until her appointment in Graz. In 2018, she was a visiting professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon.

Ursula Renz has received several awards (including the Journal of the History of Philosophy-Book-Prize 2011; a Humboldt Fellowship for Advanced Scholars; and in 2019 her book Was denn bitte ist kulturelle Identität was shortlisted for the Tractatus Essay Prize. She also received the Seraphine Puchleitner Recognition Award from the University of Graz in 2023 for her doctoral supervision.

Ursula Renz's research focuses on early modern philosophy, in particular epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and moral psychology, the history of philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and she has also published several articles on the history of analytic philosophy and on systematic questions of theoretical philosophy. Her systematic interests include conceptions of self-knowledge, identity, emotions and the relationship between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics. She has carried out, led or initiated numerous externally funded projects.

Ursula Renz is a member of numerous committees and boards (e.g. member of the selection committee for the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's fellowship programme since 2018; member of the editorial team of the European Journal of Philosophy; board member of the Spinoza Society from 2002-2020, including as chair from 2016-2020; deputy chair of the European Society of Early Modern Philosophy since 2019). Chair of the European Society of Early Modern Philosophy) and also frequently comments on current social problems and issues as a philosopher and historian of philosophy (see press review).