Meet the Shared Sacred Sites Team

Dionigi Albera is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the former director of the IDEMEC (Institute of European, Mediterranean and Comparative Ethnology, Aix-Marseille University, 2006-2016). His research focuses on migration, kinship and domestic organization, pilgrimage and interfaith mixing in Europe and the Mediterranean.

Karen Barkey is Charles Theodore Kellogg and Bertie K. Hawver Kellogg Chair of Sociology and Religion at Bard College and OSUN (Open Society University Network). Barkey has written on the early centuries of Ottoman state toleration of religious groups and she is now working on how religious coexistence, toleration and sharing occurred in different historical sites under Ottoman rule.

Anna Bigelow is Associate Professor of Religious Studies specializing in Islamic Studies and the religions of South Asia and the Middle East. Her work focuses on Muslim devotional life, especially sacred spaces and ritual practice. Current research concerns the circulation of devotional objects at Sufi shrines in India and Turkey.

Manoël Pénicaud is an anthropologist and a research fellow at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He is a member of the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology (IDEAS, former IDEMEC, Aix-Marseille University). He is a specialist in religious and pilgrimage studies, shared holy places, interreligious relations in the Mediterranean, visual anthropology and museology.