On October 28, 2022, visit professor, PhD, Associate Professor of the University of Trento (Italy) Sara Hejazi gave a guest lecture “How religions became modern” to PhD, master students and undergraduates of the Department of Religious and Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science.

Sara Hejazi is an anthropology researcher of Iranian origin, received her doctorate from the Center for Research and Study of Different Societies (Centro di ricerca e Studi sulla Complessità) at the University of Bergamo (Italy), and defended her dissertation on the meaning of the hijab in Islam. She has conducted field research on various topics including contemporary human transformation from a cultural and spiritual point of view. For example, Muslim communities in Western urban contexts; the situation of factory workers in post-industrial societies; the Iranian green movement and the desire for public participation; differences in the birth of children in Italian public hospitals based on cultural diversity; the impact of diversity on the national health system; Islamic feminism and its new frontiers. She worked as a post-doctoral at the University of Turin on research on new monasticism in a post-secular society. Later she worked on the transformation of urban spaces by modern, spirituality and world religions. Her last independent research work was the transformation of human sexuality and sexual behavior in the context of technological innovation. Sarah Hejazi also works as a researcher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation Center for Religious Studies in Trento, where she deals with issues of religion and innovation, studying spiritual meanings and trends in post-human anthropology. And she is a foreign scientific consultant for doctoral students of the specialty “Cultural Studies”: 3-year studies Kanagatov M.K., 2-year studies Tasbolatuly A.