Ricerc@Sapienza

Emily Pierini is Associate Professor in Anthropology at Sapienza University of Rome, Department of History Anthropology Religions Performing Arts (SARAS). PhD in Social Anthropology (University of Bristol) with research on the experiences of mediums in the Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of Dawn) in Brazil, for which she received the Royal Anthropological Institute Sutasoma Award.
She has taught at the University of Bristol and The American University of Rome. She has been an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil and the CRIA-ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, and Research Affiliate at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford.
She was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship in 2019 with the project “THETRANCE - Transnational Healing: Therapeutic Trajectories in Spiritual Trance” (GA no. 895395), involving Sapienza University of Rome, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and University of Oxford as partner institutions. The research investigated spiritual trance from a transnational perspective, analyzing how people learn and narrate spiritual trance, with what kinds of consistencies and differences across cultures, and its therapeutic aspects. https://www.healnetwork.eu/projects1/thetrance.
She was also awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchange Project (2025) with the project ‘RHEAL - Religion and Healing: Collaborative and Participatory Methodologies’, that brings together 13 institutions across the world to explore innovative interdisciplinary methodologies to promote collaboration between researchers, health professionals, religious and traditional healers, people with lived experience of mental health and their carers. Her research stands at the intersection between anthropology of religion, medical and visual anthropology. She has conducted ethnographic research in Vale do Amanhecer temples (Brazil, Europe and the US), Afro-Brazilian religions (Brazil), Goddess spirituality (UK and Italy), and the worship of Dr Sousa Martins (Portugal). Research topics include: mediumship and possession, embodied knowledge, healing, religious experience and learning, body and self, emotions, sensory ethnography, materiality and images, and transnational religions. Her latest projects address the relationship between spirituality and biomedicine in the areas of mental health and end-of-life-care.
Author of the book “Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer” (2020, Berghahn), co-editor with Alberto Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo of “Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing” (2023, Berghahn). She has published several chapters and journal articles, including in Ethnos and Social Compass, among others.
Co-founder and co-coordinator of HEAL-Network for the Ethnography of Healing: https://www.healnetwork.eu 
Publications: 
https://uniroma1.academia.edu/EmilyPierini

Books: 
“Jaguars of the Dawn: Spirit Mediumship in the Brazilian Vale do Amanhecer” https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PieriniJaguars 
“Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing” https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/PieriniOther