Georgetown Representative Office in Rome

This event is co-sponsored by the Georgetown University Representative Office in Rome and the Bruno Kessler Foundation Center for Religious Studies (FBK-ISR).

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Massimo Leone is the director of the Center for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation, full professor of philosophy of communication in the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences at the University of Turin, Italy, and visiting full professor of semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Shanghai, China. Leone is also an associate member of Cambridge Digital Humanities at Cambridge University. He is a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant recipient. He holds a diplôme d'études approfondies in history and semiotics of texts and documents from Paris VII, an M.Phil. in word and image studies from Trinity College Dublin, a Ph.D. in religious studies from Sorbonne University, and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Fribourg. His work focuses on the semiotic study of cultures, with particular emphasis on religion and images. He is editor-in-chief of Semiotica (De Gruyter), the journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, as well as Lexia, the semiotic journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication, University of Turin, Italy, and editor of the book series I Saggi di Lexia (Rome: Aracne, 2023), Semiotics of Religion (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2019-2022), and FACETS Advances in Face Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2023).

Sara Hejazi holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and epistemology of complexity from the Research and Study Center on Complexity at the University of Bergamo. She currently collaborates with the University of Turin and the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering (DISI) at the University of Trento. She is a researcher at the Sensors and Devices Center of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento. For about a decade, she focused on the relationship between religion and politics from a gender perspective. Currently, her research interests include the interplay between value systems and technological innovation, the cultural aspects of human-machine interaction, and the social impact of quantum-based technologies.

Riccardo Cristiano has worked as a Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) correspondent for the Middle East, as well as a Vatican expert and religious information coordinator for Giornale Radio Rai. He founded the association Journalists and Friends of Father Dall'Oglio. He is the author of several volumes on interreligious dialogue, the contemporary Middle East, and the papacy of Francis. He contributes to numerous periodicals and news websites. A new volume Beirut and the Recomposition of the Arab Mosaic is forthcoming.

Valeria Fabretti earned her Ph.D. in social systems, organizations, and public policy analysis at the University of Rome Sapienza. She teaches sociology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and at LUISS Guido Carli. She is a full-time researcher at the Center for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK-ISR), which she joined in 2017. She promotes and coordinates studies and research projects on topics related to coexistence and pluralism. She is particularly interested in spatial studies, also applied to religion. She currently coordinates the FBK-ISR program Spaces of Religions and Spiritualities: Places, Devices, and Practices of Encounter and Recognition in Plural Societies.

Debora Tonelli is permanent researcher at the Center for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation and invited lecturer in political philosophy, politic and religion, and theology at Pontifical Athenaeum S. Anselmo and at Gregorian University. She was previously a visiting scholar at Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University in 2015, at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University in 2017, and as affiliated researcher at Georgetown University in 2019. She has been the Georgetown University representative in Rome since 2019. She is currently a research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University and an affiliated researcher at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California Dornsife. Her research focuses on religion and violence, interreligious dialogue, and the biblical legacy on modern political thought.