Francesco Piraino is a sociologist of religion, culture, and art. He obtained his PhD in Sociology in 2016 at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), and was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at KU Leuven. He is currently research associate at Harvard University and director of the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations and Spiritualities at the Cini Foundation in Venice. Piraino works on spirituality, esotericism, mysticism, and the relationship between art and religion, especially, but not exclusively, in the Islamic and Sufi frame. He has recently published "Le soufisme en Europe: islam, ésotérisme et new age" (Karthala, 2023) and edited "Religious Dimensions of Conspiracy Theories Comparing and Connecting Old and New Trends" (with Marco Pasi and Egil Asprem, Routledge 2022).