Lea Ypi, PhD

Professor in Political Theory

London School of Economics and Political Science

Australian National University, Canberra

Born in 1979 in Tirana
Laurea in Philosophy and Laurea Specialistica in Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, Master of Research in Political Science and PhD in Political Theory from the European University Institute

Project

Dignity and Historical Injustice: The History of an Albanian Family

Ypi will work on a book project provisionally entitled “Indignity” that explores the moral and political meanings of dignity (both individual and collective). Written as a hybrid text merging literature, history, and philosophy, the book starts with the description of a series of visits to the archives of the former secret police of communist Albania, where the narrator tries to piece together the files contained on her grandmother: Leman Ypi. As the author revisits events in Balkan history, from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire to the rise of communism, and as she reimagines and reconstructs transformative events in Leman’s life, the book addresses a series of questions: upon what do we base our conceptions of the past? Out of the stories of our lives, whose perspective do we recreate? Does truth and truth alone preserve the dignity of a life? How can one achieve reconciliation in societies divided by the legacy of the past?

Recommended Reading

White, Jonathan, and Lea Ypi. The Meaning of Partisanship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Ypi, Lea. The Architectonic of Reason: Purposiveness and Systematic Unity in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. German: Die Architektonik der Vernunft: Zweckmäßigkeit und systematische Einheit in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Translated by Antonia Grunert. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2024.
–. Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. Penguin Press, 2021. German: Frei: Erwachsenwerden am Ende der Geschichte. Translated by Eva Bonné. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2022.