Ingolf U. Dalferth studied theology, philosophy, and linguistics in Tübingen, Edinburgh, Vienna, and Cambridge.
In 2019 he gave the Prabhu Interfaith, Peace and Justice Lecture at Cal State Los Angeles, in 2020 (together with Claudia Welz) the Tillich-Lecture 2020 in Frankfurt am Main, in 2021 die Davide Zordan Lecture in Trento/Italy, and in 2022 the Marsilius-Lecture in Heidelberg.
From 2001-2013 he served as a Member of the Norris-Hulse-Standing Commission, University of Cambridge, from 2001 to 2013 he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Subjectivity Research Copenhagen, and since 2002 he has been at Board of the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre Copenhagen.
In 2022 he received the Marsilius Medal for promoting conversation between the cultures of science and knowledge at the University of Heidelberg.
The primary research areas of Ingolf U. Dalferth include Christological, ecclesiological, and methodological issues in systematic theology, religion, philosophy (analytic philosophy of religion and phenomenology), semiotics and hermeneutics (theory of signs, language processes, forms of understanding), theories of God, emotions, trust, evil and time, and ecumenism (Lutheranism and Anglicanism).
In 1997 he was Visiting Professor of Dogmatics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland; in 1998 Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Utrecht; in 2004 Visiting Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen (Denmark); in 2006 Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Aarhus; from 2004 to 2009 Director of the Research Group ›Religion and Emotion‹ at the Collegium Helveticum in Zurich; from 2005 to 2013 Co-Director of the University Research Priority Program on the Foundations of Human Social Behavior at the University of Zurich; from 2009 to 2013 Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Project ›Understanding Trust‹ at the University of Zurich; from 2009 to 2019 Research Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Collegium Helveticum); from 2013 to 2015 Director of the Research Project ›Christian Truth in the Context of Postmodern Pluralism: Revelation between Tradition and Deconstruction‹; from 2014 to 2016 Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Project ›Prayer as Embodied Understanding‹ at the University of Zurich.