I am a Spanish anthropologist, trained and currently working at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon as a Postdoctoral Researcher, funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and Visiting Fellow at the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In my current research I am focusing on religion in Angola, Atlantic religious diasporas, mobility and territoriality and religious memory, knowledge and transmission. I am working with the Tokoist Church, an Angolan-based prophetic movement. I am particularly interested in notions charisma and leadership, prophetic epistemologies, 'religious science' and memory, biography and historicity.
I have also engaged in editorial activities. After working for some years as editorial assistant at the Etnográfica journal (CRIA, Lisbon), I am currently Book and Film Review Editor at the journal Advances in Research: Religion in Society, edited by Berghahn.
Personal website http://web.me.com/ruy.blanes/Ruy_Llera_Blanes_Webpage/Welcome.html|
Selected Publications
Forthcoming, Encounters of body and soul in contemporary religion: anthropological reflections, edited with Anna Fedele. Oxford: Berghahn [EASA Series] .
2009, "O Que se Passa Tabernáculo? Oração e Espacialização na Igreja Tokoista Angolana" [What is going on in the Tabernacle? Prayer and Spatialization in the Angolan Tokoist Church], Religião e Sociedade 29 (2), pp. 116-133, Rio de Janeiro.
2009, "Remembering and Suffering: Memory and Shifting Allegiances in the Angolan Tokoist Church". Exchange 38 (2), pp. 161-181, Leiden.
2009, "Prophetic Diasporas: Moving Religion across the Lusophone Atlantic", co-author with Ramon Sarró. African Diaspora 2, pp. 1-21, Leiden.
2008, Os Aleluias. Ciganos Evangélicos e Música [The 'Aleluias'. Evangelical Gypsies and Music]. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais.
2008, "La Guerre en temps de Paix. Ethnicité et Angolanité dans l'Église Kimbanguiste de Luanda", co-author with Ramon Sarró and Fátima Viegas. Politique Africaine 110, pp. 84-101. [Special issue on "L'Angola dans la paix. Autoritarisme et reconversions", coordinated by Didier Péclard], Paris.
2008, "European Christianities at the turn of the Millennium: ethnographic approaches", Dossier edited with Ramon Sarró for Etnográfica, volume 12, number 2 November 2008, Lisbon.
2008, "Satan, Agent Musical. Le Diable et le pouvoir ambivalent de la musique parmi les tsiganes évangéliques de la Péninsule Ibérique",Terrain 50, pp. 82-99, Paris.
2006, "The Atheist Anthropologist. Believers and Non-Believers in Anthropological Fieldwork", Social Anthropology 14 (2), pp. 223-234.