I am a socio-anthropologist specializing in religion and spirituality, World Christianities, African Studies, traditional and Indigenous religions across the Atlantic, eco-spirituality and healing, and carceral studies. My work is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Italy, Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia, the United States, and currently Mexico.
My research interrogates the embodied and socio-political dimensions of religion and spirituality, with particular focus on how religious practices challenge and reconfigure entrenched social hierarchies, colonial legacies, and extractivist global forces.
I have conducted extensive ethnographic research on religion and migration, African diasporic religions and identities in Europe, and the emergence of African Pentecostalism in predominantly Catholic contexts. This work culminated in the award-winning monograph African Pentecostals in Catholic Europe: The Politics of Presence in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2016 ), which received Honorable Mention from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (2017); the documentary Enlarging the Kingdom: African Pentecostals in Italy; and several articles in peer-reviewed journals that examine the religious aesthetics and political presence of African Pentecostals as they navigate racialized and historically Catholic European societies.
I am completing my second book, entitled The Scandal of Black Faith. Theopolitical Refusal and Liberation in Africa, (Columbia University Press, forthcoming), which draws on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in The Gambia, Ghana, and Nigeria.
My current research project explores healing practices with entheogenic or sacred plants, often called “psychedelics" in indigenous and Western societies, especially in West Africa, Central and South America and the U.S.🌿 I focus on the intersections of Indigenous cosmologies, Christian theologies, and biomedical science, observing how these perspectives intersect and converge to shape understandings and experiences of consciousness and healing. More broadly, my work examines the politics of eco-spiritualities and medical knowledge in the shadow of global histories: the arrival of Christianity (especially Catholicism) in Indigenous societies, the worldwide expansion of Western biomedicine and psychedelic science, and recreational/celebratory use of psychedelics.
I teach a wide range of courses that reflect my interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion, healing, and social justice, including Anthropology of Religion, African Spirituality and Eco-Healing, Magic, Witchcraft and Healing, Psychedelics, Spirituality and Healing, and a graduate seminar in Ethnography and Storytelling. My pedagogy emphasizes lived experience, critical reflexivity, and decolonial methodologies. I also offer courses to incarcerated students . Since 2021, I have been actively involved with the Georgetown Prisons and Justice Initiative , serving as a board member of the BLA program at Patuxent Institution and as a lecturer of the Prison Scholars Program at the DC Jail.
Before joining the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Germany). I have held research appointments at Harvard Divinity School, Utrecht University (through a Marie Curie Fellowship), New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Padua, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Forum Transregionale Studien.
I received my Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, and I am a proud first-generation college graduate.
Please note that at this time, I am unable to accept Ph.D. students
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Assistant Professor, College - Department of Theology and Religious Studies