Allegra de Laurentiis, born in Rome, Italy, in 1952, studied philosophy in Rome, Tübingen and Frankfurt. In 1975 she received her Laurea in Filosofia from the University of Rome with a dissertation on twentieth century Nominalism and its critics; in 1982 she completed her doctorate at the University of Frankfurt with a dissertation on aspects of Marx’s relation to Kant and Hegel. She taught at Villanova University and Miami University of Ohio before joining the faculty at Stony Brook in 1994.