Vittorio G. Hösle, founding Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (2008-2013), is the Paul G. Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters in the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures and Concurrent Professor of Philosophy and of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. His scholarly interests include systematic philosophy (metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political theory) and history of philosophy (mainly ancient and modern).

Professor Hösle is the author of more than 50 books, which have appeared in twenty languages, including Objective Idealism, Ethics, and Politics (1998), Morals and Politics (2004), Woody Allen: An Essay on the Nature of the Comical (2007), The Philosophical Dialogue (2012), God and Reason (2013), Eric Rohmer: Filmmaker and Philosopher (2016), and more than 150 articles. Professor Hösle is editor of The Many Faces of Beauty (2013), Dimensions of Goodness (2013), and Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge (2014), which arose from the first three conferences at the NDIAS; he is co-editor of The Idea of a Catholic Institute for Advanced Study (2010) with Donald L Stelluto, NDIAS Associate Director. His most widely published work (translated into fourteen languages) is The Dead Philosopher’s Café (2000), an exchange of letters with a young girl that offers an imaginative introduction to the world of philosophy.

He has held guest faculty appointments at universities around the globe, including in Brazil, India, Russia, Norway, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Professor Hösle's prizes and awards include the Fritz-Winter Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and he has been named to fellowships at various institutions including the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He was appointed by Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in 2013, and to the Council of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in 2017.