Scientific coordinator
Chiara Cappelletto is full professor of aesthetics at the “Piero Martinetti” Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan. She teaches Rhetoric and Aesthetics. Her areas of research include phenomenological aesthetics, contemporary aesthetics, neuroaesthetics, experimental aesthetics, visual and performance studies, and rhetoric. Her research interests include topics such as agency, performativity, embodiment, and public discourse. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach to discuss the aesthetic processes through which the self is constituted in relation to different types of artifacts and media.
She has served as a visiting fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University (NY), the IEA (Paris), Princeton University, the Kolleg-Forschergruppe BildEvidenz Geschichte und Ästhetik (Berlin), and the University of California, Berkeley. She was an associate member of CRAL (EHESS, Paris) and participated in the international project IdEM-Identification, empathie, projection dans les arts du spectacle (CNRS).
She is head of the departmental lab PIS – Performing Identities Studies. She is coordinator of the interdepartmental CRC FICTA – Feminist Philosophies, Bodies, and Technologies. She is a member of the departmental CRC EXT – Extended Realities. She is treasurer of the board of SWIP – Society for Women in Philosophy, Italy. She is vice president of the Italian Society of Aesthetics.
She has pioneered research on thermal and fetal imaging, facial masks, and digital and material prostheses to study their feedback effects on human agents.
Her publications include Embodying Art. How we see, think, feel and create, Columbia University Press, 2022; Io, lei, noi. Storie di mascherine, facce, persone (Me, Her, Us: Stories of Masks, Faces, People), Mimesis, 2025 (with Marta Calbi); Persone, parole, corpi. Avventure della retorica (People, Words, Bodies: Adventures in Rhetoric), Einaudi, in press.
She is co-author of the dance performance Heat-Us, co-produced by MilanOltre and Fulcro.
She collaborates regularly with Il Piccolo Teatro – Milan and Fondazione Feltrinelli.