Sanja Dembić

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) and the academic coordinator at the Human Abilities Centre, where I am a member of the leadership team and responsible for the program and the fellowships.

I completed my PhD at the HU Berlin in 2020. Prior to that, I studied philosophy and gender studies (BA and MA) at HU Berlin and psychology (BSc) at the University of Basel. During my PhD, I worked at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

My book Philosophy of Mental Disorder: An Ability-Based Approach was awarded the Wolfgang Stegmüller Prize 2025 by the Society for Analytic Philosophy (GAP).

My article "Defining Addictive Disorder – Abilities Reconsidered" was awarded the Prize for Philosophy and Ethics in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy 2021 by the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Neurology (DGPPN).

My bachelor thesis "Emotions as Dispositions – A Critical Discussion of Richard Wollheim's Theory of Emotions" was awarded the Humboldt Prize in 2011.

I received a doctoral scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

My brother, Berislav, and my sister-in-law, Jennifer, are also philosophers. So was my grandmother, Heda Festini.

I was born in Basel and live in Berlin with my daughter, Toni, and my partner, Jan. I have a Swiss sense of order and sometimes a Croatian temperament.

Also, I like taking pictures.

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