Dr F. Cerchiaro (Francesco)

Francesco Cerchiaro is assistant professor at Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands) and affiliated researcher at the Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven (Belgium).

He is a cultural sociologist with a specific interest in the intersection of family, migration and religion. He holds a PhD in Social Sciences (2013) from the University of Padua (Italy). Before moving to Nijmegen Francesco has worked at KU Leuven as FWO senior fellow (2020-2022) with the project “Fighting for Love. Mixed/Christian-Muslim Families’ Associations in Belgium, France and Italy” and Marie Curie fellow (2018-2020) with the project “ReMix”, “Christian-Muslim families dealing with religious pluralism in everyday family life”.

His focus on mixed families and, in particular, on Christian-Muslim families, represents a way to examining cultural diversity and the wider social changes related to family, Muslim migration and religious pluralism in Europe. Next to his research on mixed families he has also conducted research on religious pilgrimages and on the phenomenon of the off-gridders. This last research exemplifies his interest for the so called “romantic turn” and its cultural consequences in the West by means of the ways people re-signify religious symbols and cultural practices. His research is characterised by the use of qualitative methods, in particular of ‘life stories’ and ethnography.

He has published in leading journals of sociology of religion (Social Compass and Journal of Contemporary Religion), gender (Journal of Gender Studies), migration (Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Identities), Sociological Theory (Sociology), and is the author of the book “Amori e confini. Le coppie miste tra islam, educazione dei figli e vita quotidiana” [Love and borders. Mixed couples amongst Islam, children’s education and everyday life] (Guida Ed., 2016).