Additional Anchor Faculty
Marzia Balzani is a social anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on political ritual and sovereignty in India (Modern Indian Kingship, 2003) and on the Pakistani diaspora exploring transnational migration, religious minorities and persecution (Ahmadiyya Islam and the Muslim Diaspora, 2020). She has published articles on topics including gender-based violence, masculinities, asylum/refugee experiences and outcomes in the UK, pilgrimage, tourism, landscape, the ethnography of Islamic dreams, urban planning and faith, and women’s rituals. In universities in the UK and UAE she established and chaired a social anthropology programme and minor.
Balzani has expertise in curriculum review and design, and assessment criteria. She has served terms as chief examiner for both the International Baccalaureate Social and Cultural Anthropology Programme and the Anthropology A level, publishing articles on both and recently editing a special section in Teaching Anthropology (2025) on pre-university education as well as an introductory textbook (Social and Cultural Anthropology for the 21st Century: Connected Worlds, 2022, with Niko Besnier).
Balzani is a member of the RAI Education Committee, deputy chair of the IUAES Scientific Commission on Anthropology and Education, and a convenor of the EASA Teaching Anthropology Network. She is also a co-editor of The Women’s Review of Books. Balzani has recently turned her ethnographic attention to central Italy exploring among other topics, folklore, ethnohistory, the politics of water and the Anthropocene.
