Bio

I was born in Zagreb, Croatia, though I feel equally at home in Split, Croatia. I grew up in Basel, Switzerland, before moving to the US to pursue my studies.

I received my A.B. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 2001, and my Ph.D. in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley in 2007. My dissertation supervisors were Barry Stroud, John MacFarlane and Janet Broughton, with G.R.F. Ferrari from the Classics Department as the outside member.

From 2007 to 2020, I taught at Brandeis University, first as Assistant Professor and then as Associate Professor. During this time, I also spent three academic years as a Research Fellow at the University of Leipzig.

Since July 2020, I am Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh.

Philosophy is a family business. My wife, Jennifer, is also a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh. My sister, Sanja, is a philosopher at Humboldt University in Berlin. My brother, Stjepan, studied philosophy as well. Finally, my first philosophical mentor and inspiration was my grandmother, Heda Festini, who was a philosopher at the University of Zadar. She has written books on Wittgenstein, the Italian existentialist Nicola Abbagnano, and the Croatian philosopher Frane Petrić. She also translated, among other things, John Dewey’s Liberalism and Social Action into Croatian. In 2019, the Croatian Journal of Philosophy published an overview of her work on Croatian philosophy. I wrote a remembrance of her for my book Beskrajna Ljubav, which is dedicated to her. You can read the remembrance here—in English, and in Croatian.

Besides pursuing the family business, I spend a lot of time with my three kids, Marko, Petra, and Niko. To escape, I like to do CrossFit. When I merely pretend to be working, I like to play chess online.