Franco Farinelli is an Italian geographer who researches the intersections of cartography, logic, philosophy, politics and economics which underlie the phenomena of the built environment through history. He is a professor of human geography and head of the Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies at the Università di Bologna, and the president of the Italian Geographers Association. He has taught at Nordplan, the Università di Ginevra, University of California Los Angeles, Univeristy of California Berkeley, the Sorbonne and the École Normale Supérieure. He is the author of several books, including Geografia (2003), L’invenzione della Terra (2007) and La Crisi della Ragione Cartografica (2009).