Erica Onnis

Erica Onnis is Associate Professor at Cusano University (Rome). She was a fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Cultures of Research” (RWTH Aachen University) from 2021 to 2022 and has been a member of the Labont – Center for Ontology since 2015. From September 2025, she is holding the “Trandisciplinarity and Research on Complex Systems” Chair at the Iméra Institute for Advanced Studies (Aix Marseille Université). During her doctoral studies, she was a visiting scholar at University College Cork, the University of Lisbon, and Wuhan University.

Erica’s research interests lie in metaphysics and philosophy of science. In particular, her doctoral research concerned the nature of emergent phenomena, and the relation between the notion of emergence and those of reduction, novelty, complexity, and causation. On these topics, she wrote Metafisica dell’emergenza (Rosenberg & Sellier, 2021) and several papers.

Erica is also interested in Chinese philosophy, especially Daoism, and the philosophy of food. Recently, she has been working on food narratives and their relationships with climate mitigation and adaptation.

Last publications:

Onnis, E. (2026). Emergent Causal Novelty. From Early Emergentism to the Contemporary Debate. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 116, 102103.

Onnis, E. (2025). Nuove capacità e nuove qualità. Due forme diverse, ma non mutualmente esclusive, di novità ontologica. Rivista di Estetica, 89.

Onnis, E. (2025). Think outside the bun. Freedom-based food narratives and the need for global dietary changes. Cybernetics and Human Knowing, 31, (3-4), pp. 91-110.