I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at the City University of Hong Kong. Earlier, I was a tenured Assistant Professor (UD1) of Ethics and Political Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Until 2020, I was an International Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Philosophy, Wuhan University, China, and a recipient of the 2019 China International Postdoctoral Exchange Fellowship. I hold a doctorate in Political Philosophy in June 2018 from the King’s College London-National University of Singapore Joint PhD programme.
My research concerns Comparative Political Theory, Western Political Theory, Contemporary Confucian Political Theory, and Democratic Theory. I am particularly interested in the role of political leaders in democracy, the concepts of political meritocracy, political and democratic leadership, political equality, and methodological issues in non-Western political theory. My first book, Meritocratic Democracy: A Cross-Cultural Political Theory, was published in 2024 by Oxford University Press.
I am originally from Parma, Italy (with family ties in India), but since 2013, I have lived and worked in Singapore, London, Wuhan, the Netherlands and Hong Kong.