Roussou Εugenia

Assistant Professor

Academic field: “Anthropology of Religion, Ritual and Symbolic Systems”

Official Government Gazette, Issue: 1501/23.04.2025 τ. Γ ́

Eugenia Roussou is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology and History of the University of the Aegean since May 2025. She holds a BA in History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology from the University of Thessaly (2003), a MA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2004) and a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London (UCL), University of London (2010). She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, with a research grant by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, 2011-2017), and an integrated researcher at CRIA, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, Portugal (2018-2026). She is the Principal Investigator of the project ReSpell (“Religion, Spirituality and Wellbeing: A Comparative Approach of Transreligiosity and Crisis in Southern Europe»”), which is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (2023-2026, FCT grant reference: 2022.01229.PTDC). She is also a team member of the project SPIRECTS (“Spiritual practices and psychedelic substances in ritualized emerging contexts: therapeutic and sociocultural implications”, principal investigator: José Alberto V. Simões), funded by FCT and with host institution the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences, CICS-NOVA, Portugal.

Her research focuses, and has published extensively, on the anthropological study of religion, contemporary, lived and vernacular religiosity, new religious movements of the so-called New Age and/or alternative spirituality, transreligiosity and spiritual elasticity, ritual healing practices, religious pluralism and creativity, cosmology, sacred spaces and the supernatural, complementary and alternative medicine, health and well-being, with particular comparative geographical reference to Greece and Portugal. Her monograph, entitled “Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The Evil Eye in Greece”, has been published in 2021 by Bloomsbury (ISBN: 9781350152816, soft cover publication: 2022).

She is a member of the editorial board of international peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as: Religion and Society: Advances in Research (Berghahn), Shaman: Journal of the International Society for Academic Research on Shamanism, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (Springer Nature), Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, Quotidiana: Journal for the Study of Lived Religion, and a member of international academic and of research networks, associations and groups, such as: International Society for Academic Research on Shamanism (ISARS), Network for the Anthropology of Religion (NAR-CRIA), Network for the Ethnography of Healing (HEAL), Contemporary Religions and Faiths in Transition (CRAFT), Circulation and Place-Making (CPL-CRIA), IN2PAST, European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR), European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF), Portuguese Association for Anthropology (APA).

Monograph

Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: The Evil Eye in Greece. London: Bloomsbury, 2021, ISBN: 9781350152816.


Collective Volumes and Special Issues

  • (in preparation) Transreligiosity: Religion, Spirituality and Wellbeing (co-edited with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). London: Bloomsbury (under contract with the publisher).
  • Special Issue: “Spiritual Elasticity and Crisis: From Non-religiosity to Transreligiosity” (co-edited with Silvia Rivadossi and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). Religions, 14, ISSN 2077-1444.
  • Special Issue: “Transreligious Shamanisms: Exploring Contemporary Spiritual Practices and Healing» (co-edited with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). Shaman 30 (1 and 2), Spring/Autumn 2022, ISSN 1216-7827.
  • Expressions of Religion: Ethnography, Performance and the Senses (co-edited with Clara Saraiva και István Povedák). Berlin: Lit-Verlag, ISBN: 9783643911100.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

  • 2024. “Spiritual Elasticity and Crisis: An Introduction” (with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos and Silvia Rivadossi). Religions 15 (3): 373. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15030373
  • “Creativity, Auto-Ethnography, and the Re-Invention of Sacred Space in New Age Spirituality and Healing during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” In Yael Dansac and Nicolas Boissière (eds.), Special Issue “Contemporary Paganism and New Age during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Creativity, Adaptation, and Innovation.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 27 (2): 13-28, https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2023.27.2.13
  • 2022. “Living Religion between Orthodox Christianity and New Age Spirituality in Greece: Gender and Power.” Insaniyat-Revue algérienne d’Anthropologie et de Sciences Sociales 95 (XXVI: 1): 25-39, https://doi.org/10.4000/insaniyat.26563
  • 2022. “Transreligious Shamanism(s): An Introduction” (with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). In “Transreligious Shamanism(s): Exploring Contemporary Spiritual Practices and Healing”, special issue of the journal Shaman 30 (1-2): 5-20, ISSN 1216-7827.
  • 2022. “We Have Always Been Transreligious: An Introduction to Transreligiosity” (with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). Social Compass 69 (4): 614-630, https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686221103713
  • 2021. “Transnational Spirituality and Healing: an Ethnographic Exploration of Alternative Medicine in Lisbon and Athens.” Anthropology and Medicine 28 (4): 493-507. https://doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2021.1888870
  • “A transformação de religiosidade em Portugal e na Grécia: uma comparação etnográfica da Nova Espiritualidade e pluralismo religioso no sul da Europa” (The transformation of religiosity in Portugal and Greece: na ethnographic comparison of New Spirituality and religious pluralism in Southern Europe”). Rever-Revista de Estudos da Religião 16 (3): 66-80, http://dx.doi.org/10.21724/rever.v16i3.31182
  • 2015. “From Socialization to Individualization: A New Challenge for Portuguese Religiosity.” Italian Journal of Sociology of Education 7 (3): 89-112, ISSN 2035-4983.
  • 2014. “Believing in the Supernatural through the ‘evil eye’: Perception and Science in the modern Greek Cosmos.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 29 (3): 425-438, https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2014.945726
  • 2011. “Orthodoxy at the Crossroads: Popular Religion and Greek Identity in the evil eye practice.” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 20 (1): 85-105, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/303/article/671923 N1

Book Chapters

  • (forthcoming) “Religion, Spirituality, Episteme: Transreligious Epistemologies to Health, Wellbeing and COVID-19.” In Karen O’brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe (), Competing Epistemologies, Religion and Public Health. London: Oxford University Press.
  • 2024. “Kako Mati (Greece), Ch. 14 Informal Care and the End.” In Alena Ledeneva (ed.), The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Vol. 3: A hitchhiker’s guide to informal problem-solving in human life. London: UCL Press, pp. 574-577.
  • “Religião e Espiritualidade no Espaço Público, Privado e Remoto: uma Comparação Luso-Grega” (Religion and Spirituality in the Public, Private and Remote Space: A Portuguese-Greek Comparison). In Pedro Pereira and José Carlos Loureiro (eds.), Ensaios sobre Comida e sobre Religião.Viana do Castelo, Portugal: Centro de Estudos Regionais, pp. 125-136.
  • 2023. “Encountering Other Worlds through ‘Transreligiosity’: A Comparative Account of Healing, Embodiment and Transformation in the Field” (with Anastasios Panagiotopoulos). In Emily Pierini, Alberto Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo (eds.) Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 133-152.
  • 2019. “Introduction: Expressions of Religion-Ethnography, Performance and the Senses” (with Clara Saraiva and István Povedák). In Eugenia Roussou, Clara Saraiva and István Povedák (eds.), Expressions of Religion: Ethnography, Performance and the Senses, Berlin: Lit-Verlag, pp. 7-14.
  • 2018. “Spiritual movements in times of crisis: an anthropological account of alternative spirituality in Portugal and Greece.” In George Chryssides (ed.), Minority Religions in Europe and the Middle East: mapping and monitoring. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 52-64.
  • 2017. “The Syncretic Religioscape of contemporary Greece and Portugal: a comparative approach on creativity through spiritual synthesis.” In Stefania Palmisano and Nicola Pannofino (eds.), Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions: Sacred Creativity. New York: Palgrave McMillan, pp. 155-175.
  • 2013. “The New Age of Greek Orthodoxy: pluralizing religiosity in everyday practice.” In Jose Mapril and Ruy Blanes (eds.), The Best of All Gods: Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe, Leiden: Brill, pp. 73-92.
  • 2013. “Spirituality within Religion: Gendered Responses to a Greek ‘spiritual revolution’.” In Anna Fedele and Kim Knibbe (eds.), Gender and Power in Contemporary Spirituality: Ethnographic Approaches, London: Routledge, pp. 46-61.
  • 2011. “When Soma Encounters the Spiritual: Bodily Praxes of Performed Religiosity in contemporary Greece.” In Ruy Blanes and Anna Fedele (eds.), Encounters of Body and Soul in Contemporary Religious Practices: Anthropological Reflections, London: Berghahn, pp. 133-150.

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