Matteo Mameli
Philosophy

Bio

Matteo Mameli is a philosopher at King’s College London. Born and raised in Sardinia, he previously held Research Fellowships at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at King’s College, Cambridge.

He also held a Visiting Professorial Fellowship at the European School of Molecular Medicine in Milan, and was an Affiliated Scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

Research

Matteo Mameli’s work lies at the intersection of philosophy of biology, philosophy of medicine, political philosophy, and the history of materialist thought. His research explores how biological and medical knowledge shapes our understanding of human diversity, vulnerability, and social life.

He has written on heredity and development, philosophical bioethics, the biocultural foundations of human behaviour, and the philosophical implications of evolutionary theory. More recently, his work has focused on embodiment, illness, care, and the ethical and conceptual questions raised by chronic illness, disability, ageing, and the limits of cure.

He is interested in how medical knowledge and practice should respond not only to disease, but also to the broader condition of human vulnerability: our embodied, dependent, and finite nature, and our exposure to injury, suffering, and mortality. Across his research, teaching, and public engagement, he aims to bring philosophical reflection into dialogue with medicine, the humanities, and wider public conversations about health and embodied social life.

Publications

Matteo Mameli is the author of Why Human Nature Matters: Between Biology and Politics (Bloomsbury, 2024). 

This book explores what it means to speak of human nature while taking seriously the many differences that shape human lives. It argues that human nature is neither a fixed essence shared uniformly by all nor an empty or politically suspect idea. Instead, it shows how we can think about what human beings have in common without losing sight of variation, development, vulnerability, and the diverse social and historical conditions in which human lives unfold. In doing so, it explains why the idea of human nature remains important across a range of contexts, including politics, biology, ethics, and medicine.

By bringing philosophy of biology into dialogue with political philosophy, the book offers a fresh way of thinking about how claims about human nature shape our understanding of freedom, equality, human flourishing, and the significance of human differences.

A review of the book in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science is available here

A full list of publications is available on ORCID

Teaching

Matteo Mameli has taught university modules in philosophy of biology, philosophy of psychology, political philosophy, applied ethics, and philosophy of medicine and psychiatry. He has supervised PhD students since 2008. He welcomes research proposals related to his areas of expertise. 

Other Activities

Matteo Mameli serves on the editorial boards of Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy and Philosophical Psychology. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Italian Network for the Philosophy of Medicine and co-coordinates the Network’s Early Career Mentoring Programme. He is also currently co-editing a research handbook on philosophical psychology. From 2009 to 2019, he served as a Member of Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.