© HEAL Network for the Ethnography of Healing
Conference
Spiritualities and Healing
in Global and Transhistorical Perspectives
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 10-11-12 June 2025
The conference is organized jointly by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations and Spiritualities (Cini Foundation), the Center for the Study of World Religions (Harvard Divinity School) the Center for the Study of Lived Religion (Ca’ Foscari University), and the HEAL Network for the Ethnography of Healing
This conference interrogates the intersection of folk, vernacular, complementary, alternative, indigenous, and bio medicines in critical dialogue with analytical categories in the study of religion, including (folk) religions, magic, and spiritualities. The geographical parameters of the conference focus on Europe (though other regions will also be represented). This conference also takes a broad transhistorical perspective, which cuts across contemporary and pre-modern practices, beliefs, and historicities. Moreover, this conference also explores the relationship between alternative spiritualities and the pandemic, focusing on how movements rooted in religious and spiritual practices have supported or challenged scientific approaches to pandemic management across diverse temporal boundaries. These movements have not only sometimes questioned public health strategies but have also had far-reaching political consequences, fueling nationalisms, populisms, and fundamentalisms, and reshaping debates on health, spirituality, and governance. We invite anthropologists, ethnographers, sociologists, folklorists, religious studies scholars, historians, historians of science, and all those whose work explores the connections and complexities of the relationships between medicines and spiritualities, in Europe and/or beyond, to submit a paper proposal. Topics of research include, but are not limited to: the work of bonesetters, energy healers, herbalists, apothecaries, spirit possession, plant medicine, CAM, dance, music and rituals, psychedelics, magic, (neo)shamanism, pandemic and spirituality.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Summer, 1563, oil on panel.
Programme
Tuesday, 10 June 2025
9:30 - 10:00
Welcome Greetings
Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Giorgio Cini)
Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard University)
Emily Pierini (Sapienza University of Rome)
10:00 - 11:30 Panel: Spiritualities and Healing in the Mediterranean and Beyond
Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard University) The Spider Dance
Theodoros Kyriakides (University of Cyprus) Magico-Religious Proximity and the Aesthetics of Healing in Cypriot Yitíes and Yiatrosóphia
Francesca Conti (The American University of Rome) Secret Words Revealed: Gender, Tradition, and Change among Italian Folk Healers and Segnature
Chair: Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Giorgio Cini)
11:30 - 12:00 Coffee Break
Bettina E. Schmidt (University of Wales Trinity Saint David) Non-Ordinary Experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Felicia Cucuta (Harvard University) Au Creux de l’Oreille/In Your Ear: The Curative Potential of Arts during the Pandemic
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch Break
14:30 - 16:30 Panel: Spiritualities and Healing in Historical Perspective
Chair: Giovanna Capponi (Universitade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro)
Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir and Ali Qadir (Tampere University, Finland) Mystical Consciousness and Healing: Modern Eastern Orthodox Mystics between Trascendence and Community
Claudia Stella Geremia (Harvard University) Enchanting Remedies: The Donne de Fora and the Blurred Lined between Magic and Healing (16th-20th Centuries)
Silke Felber (University of Arts, Linz, Austria) Tracing the Pomander: Aromatic Medicine, Colonial Extraction, and the Becoming of the Body in Early Modern Europe
Maryam Abbasi (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) The Zar Ritual: Spirits, Healing, and Cultural Heritage in Southern Iran
20:00 Dinner
Wednesday, 11 June 2025
10:00 - 11:30 Panel: Healing between Spiritualities and Biomedicine
Chair: Joseph Sanzo (Ca’ Foscari Universtiy of Venice)
Emily Pierini (Sapienza University of Rome) Doctors, Saints, and Spirits: Therapeutic Itineraries between Spirituality and Biomedicine
Géraldine Mossière (Université de Montréal, Canada) The Work of Energy in Mind-Body Practices: A New Medicine? The Cases of 5 Rhythms and Core Energetics
Cecilia Draicchio (KU Leuven) Taking Belief Seriously? Looking at the Intersections of Psychiatry and Spiritual Healing in Ghana Through and Old-Fashioned Category
11:30 - 12:00 Coffee Break
12:00 - 13:00 Panel: Healing Sounds
Jessica Roda (Georgetown University) Jewish Healing, Sounds, Body, and the Global Culture of Wellness
Zeynep Bulut (Queen's University Belfast) Experimental Music as a Sustainable Care Model
13:00 -14:30 Lunch break
14:30 - 16:00 Panel: Spiritualities, Healing, and Politics
Chair: Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard University)
Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira (University of Cambridge) Mental Healing, Nation Building, and Alternative Modernities in Early 20th-Century China
Pilar Morena d'Alò (Newcastle University) Spirituality as Decolonisation: Co-option and Embracement in Argentine Feminism
Fernanda Gebara (Lawyer and Anthropologist, Brazil) Ancestral Medicines, Biocultural Conservation, and the Politics of Recognition: Indigenous Spiritualities as Pathways to Healing the Future
Thursday, June 12, 2025
10:00 - 11:00 Panel: Spiritualities and Healing from South America
Chair: Emily Pierini (Sapienza University of Rome)
Giovanna Capponi (Universitade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) Health Practices in Afro-Brazilian Religions: Navigating Science, Ecology and Public Health crises
Piera Talin (Center for the Study of Lived Religion at Cà Foscari University of Venice) Rite and Treatment in Ayahuasca Religions and Urban Neo-Shamanic Ayahuasca Groups
11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 - 12:30 Round Table
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch break
12:00 - 13:00 Panel: Spirituality, Healing, and COVID-19Chair: Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard University)Chair: Francesco Piraino (Fondazione Giorgio Cini)
© HEAL Network for the Ethnography of Healing