Mariano Pavanello (b. Venice, 1944) is an Italian Ethnologist. He carried out fieldwork in various African contexts for forty years spending in the field more than sixty months from 1973 to 2013. He taught Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology and African History in the Universities of Pisa (1978-2004) and Rome "La Sapienza" (2005-2013) where he was Chair of the Department of History, Cultures, Religions from 2010 to 2013. He authored many essays published in international journals and many books among which Il formicaleone e la rana (Napoli: Liguori, 2000); Forme di vita economica (Roma: Carocci, 2000); La papaye empoisonnée (Saarbrücken: éditions Universitaires Européennes, 2017); The Gender of Debt (Newcastle u/Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publ., 2019). He also edited Le forme dell'economia e l'economia informale (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 2008); Perspectives on African Witchcraft (London, New York: Routledge, 2017).