An ICREA Research Professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where he is currently a professor in contemporary and political philosophy and directs the UPF Center for Vattimo’s Philosophy and Archives. Zabala is also visiting lecturer at Renmin University of China, at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts (IDSVA), and at other international institutions. His work explores the meaning of art, politics and freedom in the 21st century. 

His latest books include Why Only Art Can Save Us. Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency (2017) and Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (2020). He is a regular contributor of articles and essays to The New York Times, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, El País and La Stampa, among other media publications.

Santiago Zabala studied philosophy at the University of Turin and at the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome, where he received his PhD in 2006. He was awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship at the University of Potsdam the following year.