Béatrice Han-Pile is a professor of philosophy at the University of Essex and principal investigator on a AHRC-funded project on The Ethics of Powerlessness: the Theological Virtues Today.

Han-Pile studied philosophy, history and literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and was awarded a Fellowship from the Thiers Foundation while completing her doctoral thesis on Michel Foucault. Before arriving at Essex, she taught in France at the Universities of Paris IV-Sorbonne, Reims and Amiens, as well as teaching at University of California, Berkeley as a Visiting Scholar twiceover. Her writing primarily focuses on Foucault, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Heidegger and aesthetics. She is a regular contributor to the BBC's flagship arts and culture radio programme, In Our Time.