Filipe Carreira da Silva


Filipe Carreira da Silva is a Zimbabwean-born Portuguese social theorist at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He specializes in American philosophical pragmatism, critical theory and intellectual history of the twentieth century. He is the author or co-author of ten books, and the editor or co-editor of seven others, and he has also published more than thirty articles. He has a monthly column in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público.

Early life

Filipe Carreira da Silva was born in Zimbabwe but grew up in Lisbon, Portugal. He graduated in sociology at ISCTE, where he subsequently became a lecturer in sociological theory. In 2000, he was admitted to the PhD programme in sociology at the University of Cambridge.

Career

In 2010 he won the American Sociological Association Distinguished Publication Award, with Mead and Modernity. Science, Selfhood, and Democratic Politics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008.
He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, which he joined in 2005. In 2016, he obtainsed the Habilitation for Research Direction, later published as The Politics of the Book. A Study on the Materiality of Ideas.
He has been a Fellow of Selwyn College since 2014. He has also served as a Graduate Tutor since 2016, and as a Director of Studies in HSPS in 2017-2018.
He has been an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge since 2013, where he teaches contemporary social theory.
He is the founding co-editor of the book series Theory Workshop. New Frontiers in Social and Political Theory.
He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago, University of Harvard, Hebrew University, and at the University of Yale.

Chief publications