Federico Vercellone studied in Turin and obtained his degree in philosophy on 30/10/1981, with a thesis on Philology, history and tragedy in the young Nietzsche. He attended a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Aesthetics) between 1983-1987; his doctoral thesis dealt with the role of hermeneutics in German culture at the end of the 18th century and in the 19th century. This work led to the realisation of the book Identità dell’antico (Rosenberg & Sellier, 1988).  On 1/11/1992 he became Associate professor of Aesthetics at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy at the University of Udine, and then Full professor from 1/11/2000; since 1/11/2008 he is full professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin. 

His works deal mostly with the relationship between aesthetics and contemporary hermeneutics, the history of nihilism in European thought, and the tradition of German Romanticism. His most recent research focuses on the theory of image, visual studies, and the notion of morphology  providing a multidisciplinary approach to the concept of form, image, and phenomenon. 

He is a columnist for the Italian newspaper La Stampa and editor of the series Morphé (Mimesis), with Olaf Breidbach. He is member of the editorial board of various international reviews (Azafea; Cosmo; Estetica; Iride; Itinera; Lebenswelt; Parol; Phantasia; Symphilosophie; Tropos) and series (Antropologia della libertà, published by Mimesis; Cosmo 1, published by Mimesis; CrossRoads, published by Nuova Cultura; Wissenschaftskultur um 1900, published by Franz Steiner; Filosofia morale, published by Claudiana; Lecture notes in morphogenesis, published by Springer; Initia Philosophiae, published by Accademia University Press; Philosophia naturalis, published by Forum; La vita e le forme, published by Bononia University Press). He is also member of the editorial staff of the review Filosofia e Teologia.

Federico Vercellone founded the CIRM | Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sulla Morfologia, at the University of Udine (2005-2012), and the CIM | Centro Interuniversitario di Ricerca sulla Morfologia (2013), of which he is now director. He was a DAAD Fellow at the University of Heidelberg (1989) and a Humboldt Fellow at both the University of Tübingen (1994-1995) and the University of Jena (2009-2010). Vercellone has also been a visiting professor at the EHESS (Paris) and at Keio University (Tokyo). He is also fellow of the Società nazionale di Scienze, lettere e arti (Accademia di scienze morali e politiche) in Naples. He is president of Centro culturale protestante (Turin, 2017-), vice-president of Centro studi Arti della modernità and a member of the advisory board of Sensibilia | Colloquium on Perception and Experience, DIREL | Centro Studi "Diritto, Religioni e Letterature" and Fondazione Centro Studi Filosofici di Gallarate.

Vercellone was president of AISE | Associazione Italiana Studiosi di Estetica from 2008 to 2001 and vice-president of SIE | Società Italiana d'Estetica until April 2015. He is now member of the Executive committee of IAA | International Association for Aesthetics.

His most recent publications include: Introduzione a Il nichilismo (Laterza, 1992; German translation, Fink, 1998); Nature del tempo. Novalis e la forma poetica del romanticismo tedesco (series "Schellinghiana", edited by W. G. Jacobs and F. Moiso, Guerini & Associati, 1998); Estetica dell’Ottocento (il Mulino, 1999; Portuguese translation, Editorial Estampa, 2000; Spanish translation, Antonio Machado Libros, 2004); Morfologie del moderno. Saggi di ermeneutica dell’immagine (il Melangolo, 2006); Oltre la bellezza (il Mulino, 2008; Castiglioncello prize 2009; Spanish translation, Biblioteca Nueva, 2013; English translation, Suny Press, 2017); Pensare per immagini (Bruno Mondadori, 2010, with Olaf Breidbach; new German edition, Fink, 2011; English edition, Davies, 2014); Le ragioni della forma (Mimesis, 2011); Dopo la morte dell'arte (il Mulino, 2013); Il futuro dell'immagine (il Mulino, 2017); Simboli della fine (il Mulino, 2018); Glossary of Morphology (Springer, 2020; co-edited with S. Tedesco); L'archetipo cieco (Rosenberg & Sellier, 2021); Bilddenken und Morphologie (DeGruyter, 2021; co-edited with L. Follesa).