Academic degree: Doctorate
Category: Associated researchers
Institutional subunit: NOVA FCSH
Research group: Circulation and Place-Making
Thematic line:
Research interests: Possesion | Personhood | Religious learning
Research contexts: Cuba | Brazil
Contact: gimmefish@yahoo.com
More information: link
Diana Espírito Santo studied psychology, philosophy and anthropology at the London School of Economics before completing her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University College London in 2009. In her doctoral dissertation, she focused on processes of learning and the construction of selfhood among mediunity practitioners of Cuban-Creole Spiritism. Her monograph, entitled “Developing the Dead: Mediumship and Selfhood in Cuban Espiritismo” was published by the University Press of Florida in 2015. Her recent postdoctoral work based at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (UL) from 2009 to 2012, and at CRIA/FCSH-UNL from 2012 to 2015 examined the relationship between cosmology, social history and creative experience in the Afro-Brazilian religious practice of Umbanda in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Her theoretical interests include the anthropology of knowledge and divination, cognition and learning, material culture and morality, dreams, and ontologies of the self. She now works as an assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and is developing a project on Chilean and Argentinian parapsychologists.
Author | ID_filtro_tablepress | Year | Type | Publication | ![]() |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Edited book | BLANES, Ruy; ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana (orgs.), 2013, The Social Life of Spirits, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 978-0-226-08177-9. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2008 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2008, "The power of the dead: spirits, socialism and selves in an Afro-Cuban universe", in Fieldwork in Religion, 3 (2): 161-177. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2009 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2009, 'Cuba, Struggle for Independence from Spain, 1868-1898, in Immanuel Ness (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, London, Blackwell. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2009 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2009, "Making dreams: spirits, vision, and the ontological effects of dream knowledge in Cuban espiritismo", Suomen Antropologi (Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society), 34 (3): 6-24. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2012 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2012, "Imagination, sensation and the education of attention among Cuban spirit mediums", Ethnos, 77 (2): 252-271, special issue 'Learning Possession, edited by Vlad Naumescu and Arnaud Halloy, ISSN 0014-1844. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2013, "Fluid divination: movement, chaos and the generation of 'noise in Afro-Cuban spiritist oracular production", Anthropology of Consciousness, 24 (1): 32-56, E-ISSN: Online ISSN: 1556-3537. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2013, "Materiality, cosmogony and presence among Cuban spirits and mediums, in Diana Espírito Santo, Nico Tassi (orgs.), Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions, London, I. B. Tauris, pp. 33-56, ISBN: 978-1-84885-796-4. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2013, "Moralidade e materialismo: uma aproximação à cosmopolítica das relações entre espíritas 'científicos e 'cruzados em Cuba", in Gamaliel da Silva Carneiro, et al. (orgs.), Todas as Águas Vão para o Mar: Poder, Cultura e Devoção nas Religiões, São Luís, Editora da UFMA. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2013, "Observaciónes sobre la relación entre la cosmo-lógica y la construcción de la persona en el espiritismo cubano", Ateliers danthropologie (online journal), 38. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2014 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2014, "Developing the dead: an ethnographic account of spirits and selves in Cuban espiritismo", in J. Hunter, D. Luke (orgs.), Talking with the Spirits: Ethnographies from between the Worlds, Brisbane, Daily Grail Publishing, pp. 177-205, ISBN: 978-0987422446. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2014 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2014, "Plasticidade e pessoalidade no espiritismo crioulo cubano", Mana, 20 (1): 63-93, ISSN: 0104-9313. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "'Paque tu me llamas, si no me conoces?': spiritist performative technologies in the creation of cosmology", in Diana Espírito Santo, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos (orgs.), Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention: Cosmic Technologies and Creativity in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Religions, Canon Pyon, Sean Kingston Publishing, pp. 56-80, ISBN: 978-1-907774-37-9. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "Algumas observações em torno da renovação na Umbanda urbana contemporânea", Mneme: Revista de Humanidades, 15 (34): 122-150. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "Desagregando o espiritual: a fabricação de pessoas e de complexos espírito-matéria em prática mediúnicas afro-cubanas", Religião e Sociedade, 31 (1): 216-236. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "Liquid sight, thing-like words, and the precipitation of knowledge substances in Cuban espiritismo", Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21 (3): 579-596. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "Purgando la otredad: muertos, visión, y self-scaping en el sueño dentro de la religión afro-cubana", in P. Di Giminiani, S. Gonzalez Valera, M. Murray, H. Risor (orgs.), Tecnologias en los Margenes: Antropología, Mundos Materiales y Técnicas en América Latina, Ciudad de México, Bonilla Artigas Editores, pp. 125-150, ISBN: 978-607-8348-78-7. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, "Turning outside in: infolded selves in Cuban creole espiritismo", Ethos, 43 (3): 267-285. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Book | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2015, Developing the Dead: Mediumship and Selfhood in Cuban Espiritismo, Gainesville, FL, University Press of Florida, ISBN: 978-0-8130-6078-1. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2016 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2016, "Clothes for spirits: opening and closing the cosmos in Brazilian Umbanda", HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 6 (3): 85-106. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2016 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2016, "Recursivity and the self-reflexive cosmos: tricksters in Cuban and Brazilian spirit mediumship practices", Social Analysis, 60 (1): 37-55. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2016 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana, 2016, "Spirits, spies and lies in Havana: unwitting and paranoid entanglements between ethnographer and field", Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, 2: 87-104. | link |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; BLANES, Ruy, 2013, "Introduction: on the agency of intangibles, in Ruy Blanes, Diana Espírito Santo (orgs.), The Social Life of Spirits, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 1-32, ISBN: 978-0-226-08177-9. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Article | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; KERESTETZI, Katerina; PANAGIOTOPOULOS, Anastasios, 2013, "Human substances and ontological transformations in the African-inspired religious complex of Palo Monte in Cuba, Critical African Studies, 5 (3): 195-219, ISSN: 2168-1392, E-ISSN: 2040-7211. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Edited book | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; PANAGIOTOPOULOS, Anastasios (orgs.), 2015, Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention: Cosmic Technologies and Creativity in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Religions, Canon Pyon, Sean Kingston Publishing, ISBN: 978-1-907774-37-9. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2015 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; PANAGIOTOPOULOS, Anastasios, 2015, "Inventive traditions: a short introduction to Afro-Cuban religiosity", in Diana Espírito Santo, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos (orgs.), Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention: Cosmic Technologies and Creativity in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Religions, Canon Pyon, Sean Kingston Publishing, pp. 1-36, ISBN: 978-1-907774-37-9. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Edited book | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; TASSI, Nico (orgs.), 2013, Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions, London, I.B. Tauris , ISBN: 978-1-84885-796-4. | |
Diana Espírito Santo | pub338* | 2013 | Book chapter | ESPÍRITO SANTO, Diana; TASSI, Nico, 2013, "Introduction, in Diana Espírito Santo, Nico Tassi (orgs.), Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religions, London, I. B. Tauris, pp. 1-32, ISBN 978-1-84885-796-4. |
ID | Researcher | Position | Proj | Title | Project type | Status | + |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
pub338* | Diana Espírito Santo | Researcher | proj10* | "Selfing": contact, magic and the constitution of personhood | National project | Concluded | + |
pub338* | Diana Espírito Santo | Research scholar | proj34* | Cosmological innovation in contemporary Brazilian Umbanda and its impact on inter-religious self-definition and legitimation | Post-doctoral research | Concluded | + |