Smaranda earned her Ph.D. at Emory University. She has held research appointments as
Postdoctoral Mellon Fellow in Philosophy at Dartmouth College, Leslie Center for the Humanities (2012-2014),
Fulbright Finland Research Scholar (2019-2020), and
Kone Foundation Finland Senior Research Scholar (2019-2021) as well as Visiting Researcher positions with the MEPA (Marginalization and Experience: Phenomenological Analyses of Normality and Abnormality) Academy of Finland project (2019-2021), the Husserl Archives in Leuven and Cologne, the Center for Subjectivity Research at University of Copenhagen, and University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Her research interests include phenomenology (especially issues surrounding phenomenological methods, possibility constitution, experiences of difference, political phenomenology as well as distinctive forms of consciousness such as imagination, perception, memory, and expectation), critical philosophy, feminist philosophy, and phenomenological psychopathology (focusing specifically on anomalous forms of imagination in schizophrenia spectrum disorders). She co-edited a special issue of
Continental Philosophy Review (with Amy Allen) entitled "The Historical A Priori in Husserl and Foucault" and a special issue of
Husserl Studies (with Julia Jansen) entitled
"Imagination in Husserlian Phenomenology: Variations and Modalities." She is the co-editor of Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters (with David Carr and Sara Heinämaa), which came out with Routledge in 2022, and of Doing a Phenomenology of Political Life: Social Critique, Sense-Institution, and Political Emancipation (with Délia Popa), which is the inaugural (2025) issue of New Directions in Phenomenology (Springer) - the book series she founded and edits with Délia Popa (Villanova) and Christian Ferencz-Flatz (University of Bucharest). Together with Sara Heinämaa, she is currently co-editing a special issue of Continental Philosophy Review (slated to appear early 2026) on "Husserl and Critical Theory." In September 2024, she launched, together with Sara Heinämaa and Délia Popa, the Intercontinental Phenomenology Research Seminar. The seminar, which meets online 10-12 times per academic year, supports cutting edge research by junior and senior scholars alike.
Smaranda is currently finishing a monograph entitled Limits, Possibilities, and Beyond - Transcendental Phenomenology as Radical Critique of the Present, which interprets the methodology of transcendental phenomenology as radical-immanent critique - a critique able to uncover the necessary structures of meaning constitution through analyses of the normalized, sedimented, and discursive layers of experience. Her second book project, The Critical Imagination - A Phenomenological Account of Possibilities and Difference, performs a nuanced philosophical analysis of the imagination and contends that as a distinctive kind of consciousness of possibilities, the imagination grants us powerful resources for understanding and addressing the crises of our time.
Her work has appeared in journals such as
Husserl Studies,
Continental Philosophy Review,
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Research,
Idealistic Studies, the
Hegel Bulletin, and
Axiomathes as well as in various collected essay volumes, such as Doing a Phenomenology of Political Life: Social Critique, Sense-Institution, and Political Emancipation (Springer 2025),
Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations– Commentary, Interpretations, Discussions (Alber 2023),
Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters (Routledge 2022),
Norms,
Values, Goals (Routledge 2022), and
Critique in German Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2020).
She is a member of the
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, the
Husserl Circle (for which she was the convenor of the
Annual Meeting of the Husserl Circle in 2014 at Dartmouth College), the
Nordic Society for Phenomenology, and
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Phänomenologische Forschung and an active referee for multiple academic journals and academic presses. She also serves as editorial board member of
Continental Philosophy Review,
Phenomenological Investigations, and the
Continental Philosophy and the History of Thought series (Lexington Books at Rowman and Littlefield).
Curriculum Vitae