I am Giorgio Scalici, a research fellow for the FRED project in the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Performing Arts of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. Before I was a postdoctoral researcher (Investigador FCT fellow) at the Instituto de Etnomusicologia (INET-MD), Universidade Nova, Lisbon (Portugal), and part of the Advisory Board of the Durham University Centre for Death and Life Studies. He obtained a BA degree in Music Disciplines at the University of Palermo (Italy) in 2009, completed a MA degree in Ethnomusicology at the Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) in 2013, and accomplished a Ph.D. in Religious Studies and Ethnomusicology at Durham University (UK) in 2019. He obtained a doctoral grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC 2015-2019).
My doctoral dissertation was conducted in consultation with Prof. Douglas Davies (scholar of religion and expert in death studies) from the Theology and Religion department and Dr. Simon Mills (ethnomusicologist and expert in shamanism) from the Music department, giving to his work a strong interdisciplinary approach. During his PhD, he conducted fieldwork for six months in Indonesia, enabling him to analyse the emotional and religious world of the Wana people of Morowali, Indonesia. The thesis focuses on the values expressed by the Wana rituals and the role of music and religion in managing emotion in time of crisis (death and illness). He is currently working on his first monograph on the Wana people and their ritual, emotional and musical world. The book will be published by Bloombsury in 2022.
During the year 2010-2018, I have been invited as guest lecturer by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome (Italy) for the first level Professional Master’s Programmes in “Autoptic, histopathological, microbiological and radiological diagnostic techniques”, by the Tadulako University (Indonesia) for the Religious Studies module and by the University of Palermo for the Music of the World module.
I have also been invited to give talks at many international conferences, including the International Conference for Asia Pacific Arts Studies, EUROSEAS, ICTM, Death, Dying and Disposal, Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference, ASEAS-UK Postgraduate Seminar, British Association for the Study of Religion, Death & Culture, European Association for the Study of Religions, and Sydney Sacred Music Festival Forum.
My research on religion, death, music and emotion has been published in high impact factor scientific journals (International Conference for Asia Pacific Arts Studies, Approaches, Journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions, Mortality, etc.).