Pierpaolo Ascari is Associate Professor of Aesthetics in the Department of Architecture at the University of Bologna. He has taught and conducted research at the University of Bologna and has developed several international research collaborations with institutions including ITEM/CNRS (Paris), the Institut für Italienische Philologie at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the Pontifical Faculty of Educational Sciences Auxilium (Vatican City). He received his degree in Philosophy from the University of Bologna and completed advanced studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, including a period of study at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He also served as Senior Tutor at the University Prison Programme of the University of Bologna, supporting students enrolled in the Philosophy degree programme, and is a regular contributor to the Italian daily newspaper il manifesto.
His research lies at the intersection of aesthetics, philosophy of culture, and the humanities of architecture, with a particular focus on the relationships between forms of perception, the built environment, and historical transformation. Through an interdisciplinary approach that brings together philosophy, literary theory, art history, and visual culture, his work investigates the role of artistic forms and aesthetic dispositifs in shaping both individual and collective experience.
His research focuses in particular on the historical morphology of forms, the political imagination of urban space, and the relationships between architecture, literature, technology, and material culture. Within this framework, he has devoted extensive research to the transformation of images and cultural forms, the intersections between aesthetics and political economy, the perceptual practices through which public spaces are constructed, and the philosophical implications of environmental issues and the Anthropocene.
He is Scientific Director of Urbaner.it, a documentation centre devoted to subcultures and countercultures. He serves on the Faculty Board of the PhD Programme in Architecture and Design Cultures at the University of Bologna, where he teaches Aesthetics of the City. He is also Co-Editor of the Aesthetics section of the European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes (CPCL), Coordinating Editor of Iride. Filosofia e discussione pubblica, and a member of the Scientific Board of K. Revue trans-européenne de philosophie et arts.
