David Albertson is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Southern California and an award-winning teacher and writer. He is the author of five books and three dozen articles in medieval philosophy, medieval mysticism, and philosophy of religion.
Albertson received his B.A. in Religious Studies from Stanford University and Ph.D. in Religion from the University of Chicago, after which he spent a year at the Universität zu Köln in Germany with a Fulbright Fellowship before arriving at USC. His most recent works are The Geometry of Christian Contemplation: Measure without Measure (Oxford University Press, 2025) and Cusanus Today: Thinking with Nicholas of Cusa between Philosophy and Religion (The Catholic University of America Press, 2024). His next book, co-authored with political philosopher Jason Blakely, is Utopia for Our Century: A Manifesto of Hope (Yale University Press, 2026).
Albertson’s first book, Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres (Oxford University Press, 2014), won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Prize from the Universität Heidelberg. His research has been supported by multiple grants from the NEH and fellowships from the ACLS, The Huntington Library, and the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. Most recently he was a visiting researcher at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin and was appointed J. E. & Lillian Byrne Tipton Distinguished Visiting Professor of Catholic Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Albertson is past President of the American Cusanus Society and serves on the Wissenschaftliche Beirat der Cusanus-Gesellschaft at the Universität Trier.
His current projects include editing the Cambridge Companion to Nicholas of Cusa and translating monastic letters and treatises from the late medieval Tegernsee controversy with K. Meredith Ziebart and Thomas Izbicki for Peeters Press.
In 2020, Albertson founded the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought, now affiliated with the In Lumine Network, a national consortium of Catholic institutes supported by the John Templeton Foundation. He writes for Commonweal and America Magazine.