Skip to main content

Pietro de Pieri Benedito

Pietro de Pieri Benedito has a Master’s (2013) and PhD (2019) in Sociology from the Brazilian UFSCar (Universidade Federal de São Carlos). His PhD thesis “‘Maria que me ensina a ser mulher’: Gênero e Religião no Santo Daime” (“Mary who teaches me how to be a woman”: Gender and religion within Santo Daime”) was based on fieldwork among a Santo Daime community in Brazil, and traces the impact of popular Catholicism, environmentalism, New Age practices and the development of the Sacred Feminine within the community, as it relates to the wider national religious scene. During his doctorate, Pietro became a member of NEIP (Núcleo de Estudos Interdisciplinares sobre Psicoativos) a collaborator for ICARO (the Interdisciplinary Cooperation for Ayahuasca Research and Outreach from Universidade de Campinas), and was a visiting researcher in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Within Healing Encounters, he will be conducting fieldwork in Brazilian laboratories that carry out biomedical research with ayahuasca, aiming to describe Brazil’s psychedelic science.