My name is Gabriele and I am an anthropologist studying Muslim communities. This Blog starts from my professional, as well as personal interest, in understanding Muslim societies and, in more general terms, the challenges which we, as human beings, face in this new millennium. I think that you may want to know more about me and my research.
I was born in Florence in 1973 and lived in Italy until I moved to Belfast for my PhD in Anthropology at The Queen’s University of Belfast. After more than three years living in Northern Ireland, and enjoying the Northern Irish culture and sharing my time with the Northern Irish ummah I moved to The University of Aberdeen, and started my career as a lecturer in the Anthropology of Islam, where I am still teaching and supervising my MA and PhD students in, what I call, Contemporary Studies of Muslims and Societies.
During these years of research, I have explored many topics concerning Muslims and Islam (arts, music, gender, ethnicity, education, political Islam, social issues, specific concepts such jihad, the ummah, and the idea of justice), yet all of them are linked to my main social anthropological interest: human identity and self.
Being an anthropologist, my methodology is to conduct fieldwork through participant observation. For this reason, the title of this Blog is Islam, Muslims and an Anthropologist. As an anthropologist, I become part of the community I am studying, and am offered the opportunity to observe and understand things from everyday life and as an ‘insider’, instead of from the mass media or libraries.
My research is published in academic articles and books. My most recent available book is Jihad Beyond Islam, I am also the Founding Editor of the journal Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life (For the list of my publications click here). Yet by nature, academic publications, even when attempting to reach the general public, are not very widely read outside the ivory tower of academia. For this reason I also started, with Prof. Daniel Varisco, and regularly contribute to, Tabsir.
I believe that anthropologists, as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead have taught us, should engage and contribute to their time by facilitating debate.
In this Blog I shall share my experiences and opinions with you and hope to read yours. I am a supporter of freedom of expression, yet I dislike vulgarity and idiotic language. All the comments will be moderated and edited based only on these two boundaries.
I hope you enjoy my Blog. Your are welcome also to join me at
