Affiliation
Assistant Professor, University of Rome La Sapienza
Biography
Gianfranco Bria is Adjunct Professor of Islamic Law at the University of Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Fellow of CETOBAC, Paris and member of the Laboratory on Mediterranean Islam at the University of Calabria. He is the Editor-in-chief of Occhialì: Review on Mediterranean Islam, and participates in the ANR-DFG research project on “Muhammad in the mirror of his community in early and modern Islam” (2017-20). He obtained the Ph.D. at EHESS and the University of Calabria: his doctoral research analysed the Islamic and Sufi revival in post-socialist Albania. Gianfranco Bria’s research work deals with Islamic authority, holiness and charisma in the Balkans, the embodiment experiences within daily-lived Islam (practices, beliefs and rituals).
Publications related to the project’s theme
Gianfranco Bria, ‘Celebrating Sultan Nevruz: Between Theological Debate and Multi-Framed Practice in Contemporary Albania’, Studia Islamica 114/3 (2020): 355-77
Gianfranco Bria, ‘The Case of Albanian as an Islamic Language between Muslim Literary Tradition and National Culture’, Eurasian Studies 18/1 (2020): 57-72
Gianfranco Bria, Aquile e Dervisci: L’Autorità Sufi nell’Albania Post-Socialista, Milan: Jouvence, 2019
Gianfranco Bria, Nathalie Clayer, eds. (2019), ‘Power, Authority and the Body: Islam’s Transformations in South-East Europe between the 20th and 21st Centuries’, special issue of Occhialì: Rivista sul Mediterraneo Islamico 5/1 (2019)
Gianfranco Bria, ‘Post-Socialist Sufi Revival in Albania: Public Marginality or Spiritual Privatisation?’, The Journal of Muslims in Europe, 8/3 (2019): 313–34
Gianfranco Bria, ‘The Alid Iconography between Theological Debate and Popular Piety in Contemporary Albania’, Middle East-Topics & Arguments 8 (2017): 57-72
