Carmel Cassar

Carmel Cassar Ph.D (Cantab), M.Phil (Cantab), BA, FRHist.S (Lond), FCCS, is Associate Professor of Cultural History at the Institute for Tourism, Travel and Culture of the University of Malta. Read for an M.Phil in Social Anthropology [Prof C.M. Hann supervisor] and PhD in Cultural History [Prof. U.P. Burke supervisor] at the University of Cambridge, England. Carmel Cassar has published extensively on Maltese and Mediterranean culture and history. His books include: Society, Culture and Identity in Early Modern Malta (2000); A Concise History of Malta (2000, 2002); Daughters of Eve. Women, Gender Roles, and the Impact of the Council of Trent in Catholic Malta (2002); Honour & Shame in the Mediterranean (2003) - translated and published in French (2005), Arabic (2005); Spanish (2004) and Italian (2002); Witchcraft, Sorcery and the Inquisition (1996); Sex, Magic and the Periwinkle (2000); Fenkata. An Emblem of Maltese Peasant Resistance? (1994). Cassar was Visiting post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Durham; a University of Wales Visiting Research Fellow, and a Mary Aylwin Cotton Foundation Fellow (Channel Islands), a Jesuit Historical Institute Fellow (2004, 2005) besides being recipient of other post-doctoral awards. He was also responsible for the development of an Ethnography Section within the Malta Museums Department and was the person responsible for the rehabilitation of the Inquisitor’s Palace in Vittoriosa as a proper museum between 1992 and 1999. His publications appeared in learned journals in Italy, Britain, France, Spain, Bulgaria, Tunisia, the USA and Malta. Cassar is Chairman of the Programme for Mediterranean Culinary Culture [PMCC] at the University of Malta; Course Coordinator of the Higher Diploma in Food Culture; Founder of the Malta Slow Food Convivium; Official representative of the Worldwide Network of Universities and Research Institutes of Slow Food International for the University of Malta; Malta University delegate and board member of the University Network of the European Capitals of Culture [UNeECC]. From 2012 to 2016 served as Rector’s Delegate on the Board of Governors of the Valletta 2018 European City of Culture and member of the Academic Research Committee of Valletta 2018. Current Research Interests: Maltese and Mediterranean Food Culture; Witchcraft and the Inquisition; Christian-Muslim-Jewish relations in Malta and the Mediterranean; The formation of Catholic society after the Council of Trent (1564); Perceptions of Disease, Healing, Plague and Charity; Codes of honour and gender relations in Malta, Italy, and the central Mediterranean; The Jesuits and Malta.