Sarah Fiona Maclaren

Sarah Fiona Maclaren has been teaching «Italy Today» (Sociology) at the John Felice Rome Center since 1999. She earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Rome, Tor Vergata) and her Laurea in Cultural and Social Anthropology (University of Rome, La Sapienza).
She is the author of the books Magnificenza e mondo classico (Rome, 2003) and La magnificenza e il suo doppio. Il pensiero estetico di Giovanni Battista Piranesi (Milan, 2005). The latter was presented at the Academia nazionale di San Luca, in Rome, by Liliana Barroero, Portia Prebys, Luigi Russo and John Wilton-Ely.
She is on the editorial board of the journal Ágalma. Rivista di studi culturali e estetica. She collaborates with the chair of Aesthetics at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. Her interests focus on Social Studies, Cultural Studies and Aesthetics on which she has published several articles and translations. She is fluent in English, Italian and Portuguese.
In 2004 she spent the Spring semester at the University of Kyoto, Japan, where she did research on links between the Italian and the Japanese cultures. She has given conferences in Italy, Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Argentina. Her current fields of research are: exploring the social and cultural aspects of traditional crafts and “studio crafts” in Italy and Japan; analyzing aesthetic concepts in contemporary Japanese architecture; and finally a social and anthropological study in Pernambuco, North-East of Brazil.
Amongst her latest publications: Piranesi y la magnificencia de las aguas de Roma, Revista de Occidente, 306, Madrid, Noviembre, 2006 (in Spanish); Studio Craft. Una produzione tra arte e artigianato in A. Caoci & F. Lai (eds.), Gli “oggetti culturali”. L’artigianato tra estetica, antropologia e sviluppo locale, (Milan, 2007); L’architettura magnifica di Achilles G. Rizzoli, “Ágalma”, n. 14, 2007. She is a member of the Instituto Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano (Recife, Brazil).