Università degli Studi di Padova

Department Member, Department of Sociology

About

I received my MA in Political Science from the University of Padua (Italy) and my Ph.D in Sociology and Methodology for Social Science Research from the Catholic University of Milan (Italy).


My recent research include a study on the Nigerian and Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora in Italy and a study on "Afro-European and Afro-Italian hip-hop".

I am currently working on a book and a documentary titled "Challenging the Catholic Church: the West African Pentecostal Diasporas in Italy". The documentary is co-produced and co-directed with Andrew Esiebo, a Nigerian photographer and filmmaker.

The book and the documentary are the result of 4 years of ethnographic research in Italy, Ghana and Nigeria.  The study on Nigerian and Ghanaian Pentecostal churches in Italy began in 2008 and explored the relationship between religion, migration, and identity (Butticci 2010, 2012). The research considers the churches’ engagement within the African communities and the Italian society and their strategies in developing their roles as both new socio-religious actors and buffer against the barriers of exclusion, exposure to racism and perceived moral decay. The study also analyzes the functions and effectiveness of the transnational networks linking Nigeria, Ghana and Italy. The research was partially divulgated through a co-authored book and several articles.

In Nigeria, I conducted an intensive field work on the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries, Lagos.  The research project focuses on the impact of the visual and material world of Pentecostalism in urban spaces of Lagos. The aim of the project is to look at how regimes of emotions and sensations led by Pentecostal and Charismatic churches contribute to the transformation and re-articulation of Lagos into a city of spiritual warfare. The research also analyzes how the Pentecostal material world is re-interpreted and reinvented by diaspora-communities in Italy where the Catholic Church dominates religious and aesthetic spaces of public and private life.


I am currently developing my expertise on digital humanities with special focus on visual and multimedia methods applied to research and teaching. During my post doctoral Program at the Department of Social and Cultural analysis at New York University, USA, I taught a course titled "The African Diasporas in the Mediterranean Lands" and I was the co-curator of a multi-media pedagogical exhibition on African Migrations to Europe. The work was presented at the Schomburg Center, New York (2009), at the Museum of the Contemporary African Diasporan Art (Mocada) New York (2009), and at the Biagiotti Gallery, Florence, Italy (2010). On September 2010 I was the curator of "Black Motion: Diasporic bodies, Identity and Emotion" a multimedia exhibition presented at Sale Gallery, Venice, Italy.  The exhibition narrates the experience of the body and its relation to motion, emotion and identity emerging from diasporic bodies in European spaces. The imagery represents bodies as the primary focus and locus of emotional power negotiated in contemporary European settings of neoliberal economies, exploited migrant communities, and insidious identity politics.


The visual journey of the exhibitions gathers pictures, videos and information drawn from my research and teaching experience on the African Diasporas in Europe.

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