He obtained his PhD in 1994 from the Husserl Archives at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, with Rudolf Bernet as his doctoral supervisor.

[1][2][3] More generally speaking, Zahavi has spoken out against different reductionist approaches to consciousness, and insisted on the theoretical significance of subjectivity and the first-person perspective.

[2][4] In working on these issues, Zahavi has collaborated and debated with psychiatrists,[5][6] developmental psychologists,[7][8] and Buddhist scholars.

He has argued that phenomenology is a powerful and systematically convincing voice that contemporary philosophy and empirical science shouldn’t ignore.

Since 2002, CFS has been working on topics related to selfhood and sociality and has actively promoted a research strategy involving collaboration between different philosophical tradition and between philosophy and empirical science, in particular psychiatry.

Since 2010, CFS has organized an annual summer school in phenomenology and philosophy of mind that typically attracts around 100 students from all over the world.