Lea Ypi

Lea Ypi is a professor of Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her areas of expertise include contemporary political theory, German idealism (including Kant and Marx) and the intellectual history of the Balkans. She has received several awards for her academic work, including a British Academy Prize for Excellence in Political Science. In 2022, she was named one of the world’s Top 10 Thinkers by Prospect Magazine. Her philosophical memoir, Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Penguin, 2021), which explores her childhood in Albania during the final stages of communism, has been translated in more than thirty-five languages and won several awards, including the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize. A native of Albania, she lives and works in London and has degrees in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza as well as a Ph.D. from the European University Institute, Florence.