Massimo Leone (University of Siena) e-mail: leonem@unisi.it
	Massimo Leone, born in Lecce, Italy, the 22nd of September 1975, Italian, holds a BA and an MA in Communication Studies from the University of Siena, Italy (1999); a DEA in Semiotics from the University ‘Denis Diderot’, Paris VII, France (2000); an MPhil in Word and Image Studies from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland (2001). He is completing a PhD in Religious Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, France and a PhD in Art History at the University of Freiburg, Switzerland. Since 2000 he has been lecturing in semiotics at the University of Siena, Italy.
He was awarded fellowships from the Universities of ‘Sorbonne Nouvelle’, Paris III, France; ‘Complutense’, Madrid, Spain, (twice); Aarhus, Denmark; Debrecen, Hungary; Maynooth, Ireland; Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France (three years); Ecole Française in Rome; Italian Consulate in Paris. In 2003, he was visiting fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris) and at the Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid. In 2004, he has been appointed Fulbright Fellow at the Graduate Theological Union, University of Berkeley, USA. Massimo Leone has published many articles and short essays in English, French, Italian and Spanish on semiotics, religious studies, cultural studies, art history and comparative literature. His most recent book is Religious Conversion and Identity, New York and London: Routledge, 2004. He is currently Research Professor at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, University of Torino