Profile Summary
CURRENT POSITION
MA in Islamic Studies at Trinity Saint David University of Wales,
Editor for various Italian and foreign magazines, Sociology of Religion and Islamic Studies teacher.
CURRICULUM
Social analyst, Islamologist, member of Associazione Italiana Sociologia “religion” branch.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology at the University of Bologna with a thesis in Social Anthropology, “Daoism between tradition and modern ages”.
Since starting his studies he has been interested in Sociology of Religion, in the qualitative methodology, the Theories of Social Action and the Social Constructionism of Berger and Luckmann.
After an MA in Human Resources Management and a brief experience in HR he continued his studies in cooperation with the Buddhist Chan association Zatma, contributing to a research on Chan Buddhism in southern China, “Assault on the Summit”.
He then began to study Judaism and Islam, with a close look at the mystical and reform movements, cooperating with Gabriele Mandel, publishing several articles for Rivista Sufismo.
A strong supporter of an approach to Islamic sources based on the analysis of historical social and cultural context, Giacalone follows with particular interest the works of Muslim intellectuals who come from human and social sciences such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, Muhammad Arkoun, Abdolkarim Soroush, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, Fazlur Rahman and the “Originalist Approach” of Pakistani theologian Ahmed Javed Ghamidi.
He currently lives in Milan where he is working on his MA dissertation in “Islamic Studies” at Trinity Saint David, University of Wales, with the objective of analyzing the development of Islamic communities in Italy, the integration process and detect the main problems in order to find some potential solutions.
In addition, he is cooperating with online newspapers and magazines such as Diritto di Critica, where he deals with Islam and affairs linked to Islamic countries and is head writer for Drumtide Magazine, for which he writes about Islam in Africa and West African traditional religions.