Ugo E. M. Fabietti is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Director of the PhD Programme in Anthropology at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He read Philosophy in Milan and Pavia, and subsequently Social Anthropology at the E.H.E.S.S. in Paris. Before being appointed to the University of Milano-Bicocca, he taught at the Universities of Turin, Pavia, Florence and, as Visiting Professor, at the E.H.E.S.S. He carried out field work mainly among the Bedouin of Northern Saudi Arabia (1978-1980) and the Baluchi peasants of South-Western Pakistan (1986-1994, intermittent). He is the General Editor of the journal Antropologia. Among his recent works: Ethnography at the Frontier. Space, Memory and Society in Southern Balochistan (Bern and New York 2011) and Materia sacra. Corpi, oggetti, immagini, feticci nella pratica religiosa (Milan 2014).
Delphine Gardey, a historian and social scientist, is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is the head of the local Institute for interdisciplinary research on gender. Her research areas include the history of women in the workforce; social, feminine, and gender history; feminist theory; and the relations between gender, science, and technique. She has recently published Écrire, calculer, classer. Comment une révolution de papier a transformé les sociétés contemporaine (1800-1940) (Paris 2008) and Le féminisme change-t-il nos vies? (éd., Paris 2011).
Andre Gingrich is Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From 2008 to 2012 he was chairman of a panel on social sciences of the European Research Council. He has carried out extensive research in the Middle East and in Central Europe. In 2005 he co-authored the volume One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology (Chicago University Press). In 2010 he published in the journal American Anthropologist (n. 112) the seminal article ‘Transitions: Notes on Sociocultural Anthropology's Present and Its Transnational Potential’.
Wolfgang Kaltenbacher is Coordinator of International Affairs at the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies (Naples). After being trained in philosophy, social and cultural anthropology, Indology, Tibetology, Sinology, and African Studies he carried out field research in Asia and Africa. He has taught philosophy and linguistics at the University of Vienna and at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. His recent researches are dedicated to methodological and epistemological problems in the social sciences and the humanities.
Bruno Karsenti, a philosopher, is Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He has extensively worked on French philosophers, social scientists, and anthropologists such as Comte, Tarde, Durkheim, Mauss, and Lévy-Bruhl. His publications include: L’Homme total. Sociologie, anthropologie et philosophie chez Marcel Mauss (Paris, rééd. 2011); Politique de l’esprit (Paris 2006); Moïse et l’idée de peuple. La vérité historique selon Freud (Paris 2012); D’une philosophie à l’autre. La politique et les sciences sociales des modernes (Paris 2013).
Marino Niola is Professor of Anthropology at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, Italy. His research areas include anthropology of contemporary symbols, anthropology of arts and performances, and anthropology of food. He is the Director of the MedEatResearch, a Centre for Social Research on the Mediterranean Diet, and writes columns for various leading newspapers and magazines in Italy, France, and Switzerland.
Daniel-Henri Pageaux is Professor Emeritus of General and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University-Paris iii. Originally trained in Hispanic Studies, his areas of interest also include the francophone literatures of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. He is one of the Editors of the Revue de Littérature comparée and a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. He is the author of around 20 volumes, covering the intercultural relations between France and the Ibero-American world, the theories of novel, and the methodology of comparative literature. As a novelist, he published under the pen names of Michel Hendrel (in French) and León Moreno (in Spanish).
Francesco Remotti is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Turin, Italy. He conducted fieldwork on the Banande in the Northern Kivu area (DR Congo) and historical ethnographic research on the kingdoms of Equatorial Africa. His recent works include: Contro l’identità (Rome 1996); Contro natura. Una lettera al Papa (Rome 2008); L’ossessione identitaria (Rome 2010); Noi, primitivi (Turin 2009); Cultura. Dalla complessità all’impoverimento (Rome 2011); Fare umanità. I drammi dell’antropo-poiesi (2013).
Domenico Silvestri is Professor Emeritus of Glottology and Linguistics at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’. He has authored over a hundred publications, including La nozione di indomediterraneo in linguistica storica (1974), La teoria del sostrato: metodi e miraggi (1977-1982), Testi e segni di Uruk iv. Analisi sintattiche (with Lucia Tonelli and Vincenzo Valeri, 1985), La nuvola meravigliosa. Premesse, presupposizioni e conclusioni (precarie e provvisorie) di un itinerario metalinguistico (2011).
Wiktor Stoczkowski is Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. His works focus mainly on the anthropology of knowledge in the contemporary West. His publications include: Anthropologie naïve, anthropologie savante. De l’origine de l’homme, de l’imagination et des idées reçues (Paris 1994); Aux origines de l’humanité. Anthologie (Paris 1996); Des hommes, des dieux et des extraterrestres. Ethnologie d’une croyance moderne (Paris 1999); Explaining Human Origins. Myth, Imagination and Conjecture (Cambridge 2002); Anthropologies rédemptrices. Le monde selon Lévi-Strauss (Paris 2008).
Gérard Toffin is an Anthropologist and Director of Research at the Centre for Himalayan Studies of the cnrs, France. He conducted fieldwork in Nepal since 1970, mainly on the Newar and the Katmandou valley, both in the urban and rural environments. Between 1975 and 1983, he worked on the Tamang of the Ganesh Himal and of Nuwakot (Nepal), as well as on a krishnic sect in India and Nepal (2000-2008). His recent interests include the newar theatre, the social, political, and religious changes in the Nepalese republic, and other issues in urban anthropology. His recent publications include: Newar Society. City, Village and Periphery (2007) and La Fête-spectacle: théâtre et rite au Népal (2010).
