GIOVANNI CASADIO is Professor Ordinarius of History of Religions at the University of Salerno (2004). Founder and editor of the series Biblioteca di Studi Religiosi (Giordano, Cosenza), Biblioteca di Storia delle Religioni (Il Calamo, Roma), and Humanitas (Loffredo/Guida), Axolotl. Studi sulle religioni (Edizioni Mimesis, Milano). Secretary of the SISR (Società Italiana di Storia delle Religioni) (2012). Member of the executive committee of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) as Vice -President (2013). IAHR (Intern. Ass. for the History of Religions) Honorary Life Member (2015). Past advisor of the series Studien und Texten zur Antike und Christentum (Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen). Associate editor of the II ed. of Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion (2005). Past co-director of Symposia Cumana (an annual venue at Cuma sponsored by the Vergilian Society and Brandeis University) from 2002 to 2012. Member of the advisory board of several international journals. He has authored around 150 publications in Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, and Romanian relative to Greek religion (Dionysus, Orphism, Plato, Plutarch), Near-Eastern religions (Iran, Ugarit, Mesopotamia), ancient Christianity and syncretism (Gnosticism, Manichaeism), women and gender studies, history of the history of religions. Books: Storia del culto di Dioniso in Argolide (1994), Vie gnostiche all’immortalità (1997), Il vino dell’anima (1999), Ugo Bianchi: una vita per la storia delle religioni (ed. 2002), Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia (2009; pb 2010), Lo sciamanesimo prima e dopo Mircea Eliade (2014).

This event is organized in collaboration with the Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy and supported by a grant of the Executive Unit for Financing Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P3-3.6-H2020-2016-0018, within PNCDI III.