Notes on Contributors

Giovanna Bacchiddu received her doctorate in social anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of a number of articles on
religion, sociality and kinship in Apiao, Chiloé, Chile. She is currently
working on a project on transnational adoption, investigating perceptions
of relatedness and identity amongst Chilean children adopted by Italian
parents.

Katia Ballacchino obtained her PhD in ethnology and ethno-anthropology from the University ‘Sapienza’ in Rome. She is currently Adjunct Professor at the University of Molise. Her main research topics are: second-generation immigrants in Italy; social and cultural mediation; visual ethnography; and popular traditions and the inventory of the intangible cultural heritage in the South of Italy. She is author of several publications about these topics.

Ruy Llera Blanes, anthropologist, is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Anthropology Department). He specializes in the anthropology of religion, having previously worked with Pentecostal movements in Southern Europe. He is currently working with African prophetic movements, discussing issues of knowledge, transmission, memory, rationalism, leadership and charisma.

Aleksandra Cimpric, anthropologist, is a PhD student at the University
of Provence (Aix-Marseille I) and a member of CEMAf (Centre d’Etudes
des Mondes Africains). She is doing a research work in Central African
Republic on the transformation of symbolic representations related to
water, namely, talimbi witchcraft. Her work is largely concerned with the
imagery of occult forces in everyday life of Central African population, as
well as violence as a result of witchcraft accusations. Her current interests
include also Christianity and new religious movements, violence, juridical
anthropology and identities in contemporary Central African Republic.

Keith Egan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, where he received his PhD in anthropology in 2007. He is currently researching the construction of gender, faith and belonging among Irish pilgrims at Catholic shrines in Europe.

Anna Fedele explores in her work the intersections of gender and religion, the importance of corporeality in religious contexts, and ritual creativity. She has done extensive fieldwork on alternative pilgrimages to French shrines and is the author of Looking for Mary Magdalene (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia (CRIA) of the Lisbon University Institute and a research fellow at the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales of Paris.

Kim E. Knibbe is an anthropologist and sociologist of religion and works as assistant professor at the University of Groningen. The research on which her contribution is based was carried out at the VU University in Amsterdam within an international research project titled ‘transnational Nigerian-initiated churches, networks and believers in three northern countries in Europe’. This project was initiated by the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (see http://www.glopent.net). She has done research on religion and spirituality in the Netherlands, Nigeria and the Philippines.

Ann Maria Ostenfeld-Rosenthal, Phd, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research includes the following keywords: spiritual healing, functional disorders, placebo, health and spirituality, doctor-patient relationship, Denmark, ritual, social change, popular religion, pilgrimages, gender, identity, regionalism and Spain.

João Rickli completed his PhD research in 2010 at the Vrije Universiteit
in Amsterdam, with a scholarship from the Brazilian Ministry of Education. He investigated Dutch Protestant missionary and diaconal initiatives in Brazil. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the VU University in Amsterdam.

Eugenia Roussou, anthropologist, is a postdoctoral researcher at CRIA/
FCSH, New University of Lisbon. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Greece on the subjects of religion, ritual performativity and material manifestations of belief. She is currently working on the influence of alternative spiritualities in contemporary Portuguese religiosity.

Andrew Spiegel is associate professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town where he has taught for over thirty years, ten of them as head of department. He has published on a wide variety of southern African topics, most recently on racism, on the concept of tradition and its uses in the southern African context, on the challenges of teaching social anthropology in a South African context and, in collaboration with a civil engineer and an environmentalist, on the social implications of drainage problems in informal settlements.


Silke Sponheuer is a practising eurythmist who trained and worked for seventeen years at the Hamburg Eurythmy School. She has been director of the Kairos Eurythmy Training programme in Cape Town for fifteen years and has choreographed and directed various stage eurythmy performances. In 2009 she was awarded a master’s degree in dance (choreography – with distinction) by the University of Cape Town.

Ehler Voss has studied anthropology, philosophy and German language and literature. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Leipzig, Germany, and is currently researching 19th century European spiritism at the University of Siegen, Germany.