Davide grew up in Turin, Italy, where he obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy, as well as a PhD in the history of political thought. During this period, he developed an interest in normative political theory, which led him to pursue a PhD in that discipline at the University of Manchester, awarded in 2023, under the supervision of Prof. Miriam Ronzoni and Prof. Christian Schemmel. Since then, his research has been in analytical political theory and has centred on human rights and republicanism.
From 2023 to 2026, Davide was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy. During this period, he also held visiting fellowships at the Chaire Hoover, UCLouvain-la-Neuve, with Prof. Axel Gosseries, and at the Chair in Philosophy and Political Theory at LMU Munich, with Prof. Laura Valentini. In 2026, he took up a three-year Research Associate position at Loughborough University on the project “The Right to Liveability: An Ethical Assessment”, led by Dr. Guy Aitchison.
Davide’s research is in normative political theory. It centres on republicanism, with a focus on international morality. Davide has developed a rights-based form of republicanism, which understands rights, and human rights in particular, as essential to the realisation of freedom as non-domination. His ultimate aim is to provide a fully-fledged theory of this rights-based republicanism, guided by the conviction that its twofold concern with arbitrary power and rights insecurity equips it uniquely well to diagnose and recommend how to address both old and new injustices.
In his doctoral work, Davide laid the foundations for this theory. In his PhD dissertation, entitled "A Republican Approach to Human Rights", he provided the first reasonably comprehensive republican account of human rights. He spelled out the relationship between republican freedom and human rights, analysed the human rights central to republican freedom, and provided a blueprint for the institutions needed to realise them. He also applied his republican approach to migration issues, specifically to vulnerable migrants such as stateless persons and refugees, showing that it captures the demanding and international implications of their fundamental entitlements, notably their human right to citizenship. He is now developing a book proposal, provisionally entitled “Republican Human Rights”, which draws on this body of work and which he aims to complete and submit in the coming months.
In his postdoctoral work, he has drawn on his rights-based republicanism to address subjects vulnerable to domination yet overlooked by republicans, namely, non-human animals and future persons.
Currently, as a Research Associate on the project “The Right to Liveability: An Ethical Assessment”, led by Dr. Guy Aitchison, he is further expanding and refining this approach to assess the unequal distribution of mental distress and suicide among social groups and to develop proposals for addressing such inequalities.
- (2026) Licencing Pet-keeping. Ethics, Policy & Environment (with Matthew Wray Perry). https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2026.2682996
- (2026) The Naturalisation of the Vulnerable: An International Responsibility with Demanding Implications. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 31(3): 337-365.
- (2026) Constitutional Demoicracy. An International Republican Regime of Human Rights. Moral Philosophy and Politics 13(1): 97-126.
- (2025) An Index of Intergenerational Justice: Main Concepts and Preliminary Evidence from the Age-It Research Program. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 80(S2): gbaf192 (with V Galasso, A E Galeotti, A Bellia, E Biale, C Burelli, C Ruiz-Tagle Coloma, L Santi Amantini, and Gloria Zuccarelli)
- (2024) Non-domination Without Rights? An Impossibility. Social Theory and Practice 50(2): 335–360. DOI: 10.5840/soctheorpract2023425193