Dr R.M. Sonderegger (1967) has been appointed Professor of Metaphysics and its History in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).

Ruth Sonderegger researches the history and systematics of the concept of critique in philosophy and other disciplines. The tension between so-called pre-critical thought and critical philosophy from Kant to Foucault play an important role in her research, as does the relationship between critical theories and concrete critical practices. In her project ‘The history and future of critique,' she continues research that she started during an earlier project on art criticism at the Freie Universität Berlin. The relationship between philosophical aesthetics and art criticism was central to that project. Though in recent years Sonderegger has primarily concentrated on the relationship between the theoretical and practical dimensions of critique, she has also continued researching art as a possible form of critique since writing her dissertation.

Sonderegger has been Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Amsterdam since 2005. She previously worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department. She was Assistant Professor at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1993 to 2001. She obtained her doctorate there in 1998 with a dissertation entitled Towards an Aesthetics of Play: Hermeneutics, Deconstruction and the Stubbornness of Art (Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels. Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktion und der Eigensinn der Kunst). She has been a guest lecturer at the New School for Social Research in New York and at Pécs University (Hungary). She has been a member of the editorial staff of Crisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy (Krisis. Tijdschrift voor actuele filosofie) since 2004.