Nicola Perullo

Full Professor of Aesthetics – Rector
PHIL-04/A

Telefono: +39 0172 458570
Email: n.perullo@unisg.it – rettore@unisg.it

University of Gastronomic Sciences | Pollenzo Campus
Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, 9
fraz. Pollenzo – 12042 Bra (Cn) – Italy

 

BIOGRAPHY

Nicola Perullo (Livorno, 1970), philosopher and essayist, is a full professor of Aesthetics. He graduated with top marks in 1994, with a thesis on Derrida and Wittgenstein under the guidance of Aldo G. Gargani and Jacques Derrida, and received his PhD in Philosophy in 2001, with a thesis on Giambattista Vico under the guidance of Leonardo Amoroso at the University of Pisa. Having studied with Jacques Derrida in Paris, he translated and edited Derrida’s works in 1997 for Raffaello Cortina Limited Inc., and published his first works in those years in the journal aut-aut.

In 2002, he began collaborating with the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, starting research on the philosophical and aesthetic basis of food and taste. The first publication, Per un’estetica del cibo (Aesthetica, 2006), inaugurated a strand of studies in Italy, followed by L’altro gusto (ETS, 2008) and Filosofia della gastronomia laica (Meltemi, 2010). With Il gusto come esperienza (Slow Food, 2012), a new approach to taste appreciation was codified and has become a benchmark in the field. The book has been translated into Portuguese (2015) and English by Columbia University Press (2016). A parallel field of research that developed during those years concerns the relationship between food and art, to which the book La cucina è arte? Filosofia della passione culinaria (Carocci, 2013) is dedicated.

In recent years, his study has focused on proposing an alternative approach to intellectual and aesthetic knowledge, in the sense of a radical, ecological, and implicative relationalism. Wine has been chosen as an example for practicing such perceptual ecology. Episthenology. Wine as Philosophy (Mimesis, 2021) has become a benchmark for a counterculture of wine appreciation and knowledge. The book has been translated into English by Columbia University Press (2020) and into French by Éditions Mimésis (2024).

In Ecological Aesthetics. Perceiving Wise, Living Correspondingly (Mimesis, 2020), he presents the ideas of ecological perception as a phenomenology of relationships, which continue to form the core of his current research. The same approach is explored in an explicitly gastronomic context in L’altro gusto. Per un’estetica dell’esperienza gustativa (Edizioni ETS, 2021 [new edition]) and in Scritti gastronomici corsari. E altri saggi sulla consapevolezza del cibo (Edizioni ETS, 2023). Aesthetics without (s)objects. Per una nuova ecologia del percepire (DeriveApprodi, 2022) constitutes a new field of research that deepens and radicalizes the implications of a processual and relational aesthetics. An expanded and revised version of this volume, Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects. Relational Thinking for Global Challenges, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing.

In addition to books, he is the author of about 100 essays and academic articles in various national A-range journals, international journals, and collective volumes.

 

INSTITUTIONAL POSITIONS
  • Rector

 

TEACHING ACTIVITY
  • Critical Gastronomy and Languages of Taste [Graduate Degree in Food Innovation & Management]
  • Filosofia del Cibo [Undergraduate Degree in Gastronomic Sciences and Cultures]

 

MAIN INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AREA in UNISG

Perception and quality

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SPECIFIC RESEARCH TOPICS
  • Theory of Perception
  • Aesthetic Experience
  • Gustatory Aesthetics
  • Food and Art
  • Ecology, Education and Creativity of Perception
  • Phenomenology
  • Deconstructionism
  • Aesthetics and Ethical Engagement
  • Philosophy as a Way of Life and Wisdom

 

RESEARCH PROJECTS UNISG

 

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