School of Social & Political Sciences

Diego Maria Malara will join the School of Social and Political Sciences as a lecturer in the anthropology of religion. He is currently completing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on Orthodox Christianity in urban Ethiopia. Diego Maria Malara’s research interests include kinship and domestic rituals, religious pluralism and media, personhood and embodiment, spirit possession and modernity, intimacy and hierarchy, as well as emerging forms of urban vulnerability and subjectivity. He has conducted extensive ethnographic research in northern Ethiopia and Addis Abeba, and is currently planning a new project on the Ethiopian diaspora in the United Kingdom and Italy. Beyond classic anthropological methods, Diego Maria Malara has a keen interest in visual ethnography. His recent documentary film, “The Devil and the Holy Water”, explores new forms of public orthodox exorcism and has been screened widely across film festivals in Europe and Australia. In December 2016, the film received the “Best Documentary Short Film Award” at the Lisbon International Film Festival

First published: 13 January 2017