I was born in Barcelona and I obtained my BA at the Universitat de Barcelona. In 1982 I joined the PhD program at Stanford University, where my PhD was awarded in January 1989. I have been Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside, and Reader at the London School of Economics. In 2014-15 I was Professor of Philosophy at Western University, Ontario (Canada). I have been coordinator of the research group LOGOS (http://www.ub.es/grc_logos ). I was awarded the Narcís Monturiol Medal by the Generalitat de Catalunya in 2012. I am an elected member of the Academia Europaea since 2009, and from January 2013 till July 2014 I was the Academic Director of the Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub in Barcelona. In. 2017 I was elected Chair of the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Section of the Academia Europaea.

Research interests

I am primarily interested in the exploration of reference, the relation between words and pieces of the world that makes it possible to talk about things. A traditional explanation of the relation of reference is the view that reference is mediated by our cognitive perspective on things. On this view, which objects we talk about is determined by the concepts we associate with the expressions we use. Against this view I defend an approach according to which what we refer to is not determined by our internal mental states nor by the concepts we entertain; it rather depends on social and causal factors that are external to our mind. This area of research is connected to other research areas, especially in Linguistics and Psychology.