Cecilia Draicchio

Cecilia Draicchio is a FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and an honorary research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome. She holds a PhD in History, Anthropology and Religions from Sapienza University of Rome (2023), with a thesis examining collaboration between psychiatric institutions and spiritual healers in rural Ghana. Her current research, funded by FWO, traces the transnational history of madness in postcolonial Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, focusing on intersections between psychiatry, religious healing, and social control.

Her education includes a Master of Arts in African Studies from SOAS University of London and degrees in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology from Sapienza University of Rome. Her work critically engages with Global Mental Health policies, economic inequalities in healthcare, and decolonial perspectives in medical anthropology.

Publications include ethnographic studies on Ghanaian mental healthcare practices and the role of prayer camps. Her research methodology combines archival analysis with long-term fieldwork in Nzemaland, emphasizing marginalized voices and the socio-political dimensions of madness.

Key projects include the FWO-funded “Transnational History of Madness from the Margins,” which challenges Eurocentric narratives by centering Global South perspectives. Awards include the prestigious FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship.