Jung Ran Annachiara Forte

I am an anthropologist and I joined the department of Anthropology and Sociology in 2014. I  completed my PhD in Social Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, in 2007. My research is located at the intersections of the study of “traditional” African religions and subjectivity. In my doctoral dissertation—Chevauchés par les dieux. Initiations des Occidentaux aux cultes Vodun béninois: pratiques culturelles et trajectoires identitaires—, grounded on extensive fieldwork in the Republic of Benin, West Africa, I have explored the dynamics of change of a traditional religion. Historically characterised by a striking extraversion and flexibility, Vodun cults have travelled, adapted and transformed across time and space, creatively re-inventing their traditions, generating new meanings and redefining regimes of practice, both locally and globally. Recently, in collaboration with Leslie Witz and Paolo Israel, I have published an edited volume that charts new trends in South African historiography through a series of essays from the early 1990s to the present. In the department, I have been teaching classes on rituals, beliefs, traditional practices, gender and kinship, and popular culture.