Anastasios Panagiotopoulos (PhD 2011, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, UK) is the co-Principal Investigator of ReSpell. 

He has conducted research on Afro-Cuban religiosity, divination, spirit possession, and mediumship in Cuba and Spain. More recently, his research interests have been directed towards contemporary religiosity and spirituality, alternative therapy, metaphysical views, and secularism in Europe, especially in Spain and Greece. He has been a postdoctoral and, subsequently, a senior researcher at the Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropología (CRIA) and FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal. Since May 2023 he is a distinguished researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Seville (funded by the EMERGIA research grant with reference number: EMC21_00043). He is co-editor (with Dr. Eugenia Roussou) of the Reviews section of the journal Religion and Society: Advances in Research, member of the departmental Research Group: “Cultural and Social Transformations in Andalusia and America” (SICA - SEJ177), Department of Social Anthropology, University of Seville, Spain. (https://investigacion.us.es/sisius/grupo/SEJ177), member of the network: HEAL: Network for the Ethnography of Healing, member of the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed academic journal: Shaman.

He has published extensively in numerous peer-reviewed academic journals (such as HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Social Compass, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, Religions) and chapters in edited volumes. He is the co-editor of two edited volumes: (1). Articulate Necrographies: Comparative Perspectives on the Voices and Silences of the Dead (2019, Berghahn), (2). Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention: Cosmic Technologies and Creativity in Contemporary Afro-Cuban Religions (2015, Sean Kingston Publishing). His publications include the introduction and dissemination of the term ‘transreligiosity’: (1). Roussou, Eugenia and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos. 2022. ‘Transreligious Shamanism(s): An Introduction’. Shaman 30(1 & 2): 5-20. (2). Panagiotopoulos, Anastasios and Eugenia Roussou. 2022. ‘We Have Always Been Transreligious: An Introduction to Transreligiosity’. Social Compass 69(4): 614-630. (3). Roussou, Eugenia and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos. 2022. ‘Transreligious Shamanism(s): Exploring Contemporary Spiritual Practices and Healing’. Shaman 30(1 & 2): 5-138. (4). Roussou, Eugenia and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos. 2023. ‘Encountering Other Worlds through “Transreligiosity”: A Comparative Account of Healing, Embodiment and Transformation in the Field’. In Pierini, Emily, Alberto Groisman and Diana Espírito Santo (eds.). Other Worlds, Other Bodies: Embodied Epistemologies and Ethnographies of Healing, pp. 133-152. New York: Berghahn. (5). Roussou, Eugenia, Rivadossi, Silvia and Anastasios Panagiotopoulos. 2023. ‘Spiritual Elasticity and Crisis: Fron Non-Religiosity to Transreligiosity’. Special Issue of journal Religions.