I study how religion and spirituality become sites of power and transformation: across continents, across centuries, across species.
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.
African Christianities, Migrations, and Diasporas
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.
Eco-Spirituality, Healing, and Sacred Plants
My current research explores eco-spirituality and healing, with a particular focus on sacred plants and plant medicine in Indigenous and Western societies, especially in West Africa, Central and South America, and the United States. I examine the intersections of Indigenous eco-spiritualities, Christian theologies, and biomedical science, and how these perspectives converge to shape understandings of consciousness, healing, and ecology.
Teaching and Pedagogy
I teach a wide range of courses reflecting my interdisciplinary approach to religion, healing, and social justice: Anthropology of Religion, African Eco-Spirituality and Healing, Magic and Witchcraft, Psychedelics and Spirituality, and a graduate seminar in Ethnography and Storytelling. My pedagogy emphasizes lived experience, critical reflexivity, and decolonial methodologies.
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.
Appointments and Education
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 (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