Ricerc@Sapienza

Emily Pierini is Assistant Professor (RTD-B) in Anthropology at Sapienza University of Rome.
PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bristol with a research on the experiences of spirit mediums in the Brazilian Spiritualist Christian Order Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn), which was awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Award. She lectured at the University of Bristol and The American University of Rome. She has been Visiting Professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil, at CRIA-ISCTE-IUL Lisbon University Institute, and Affiliate of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford. 
She has conducted ethnographic research in the temples of the Vale do Amanhecer (Brazil and Europe), in Afro-Brazilian religions (Brazil), and on Goddess Spirituality (UK and Italy). Her work addresses spirit mediumship and possession, embodied knowledge, healing, religious experience and learning, body and self, emotions and senses, and transnational religions. 
Her Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship project “THETRANCE – Transnational Healing: Therapeutic Trajectories in Spiritual Trance” (grant agreement No 895395) (GA n. 895395) involves Sapienza Università di Roma, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina and University of Oxford. This research investigates therapeutic spiritual trance in a transnational perspective. It analyses how people learn and narrate about spiritual trance, with what kinds of consistencies and differences across cultures, and how trance-based healing practices may be relevant for therapeutic purposes. 
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 

Marie Skłodowska–Curie Global Fellowship "THETRANCE - Transnational Healing: Therapeutic Trajectories in Spiritual Trance" https://www.healnetwork.eu/projects1/thetrance