A student of Rosario Villari, he earned his degree in Early Modern History with a thesis on witch-hunting in the former Diocese of Como. A member of the Società Italiana di Storia delle Religioni (SiSr), he is currently the coordinator of the Laboratorio etnostorico “Giuseppe Bonomo” (Università Giustino Fortunato). In 1998, together with Guglielmo Lutzenkirchen, he founded the Centro di studi storico-antropologici “Alfonso M. Di Nola” – Culti, culture e medicina popolare (Center for Historical-Anthropological Studies “Alfonso M. Di Nola” – Cults, Cultures, and Folk Medicine), and since 2008 he has served as scientific director of the Centro Insubrico di Ricerche Etnostoriche (CO).
His publications include: Il noce di Benevento. La stregoneria nel Sud Italia (Xenia, 1990); L’ultimo sigillo: l’Apocalisse nel XXI secolo (Asefi, 1999); L’ultimo sigillo: la fortuna dell’Apocalisse (Castel Negrino, 2011); La strega e il crocifisso: radici cristiane o cristianizzate? (Castel Negrino, 2008); Montagne stregate. La lunga caccia alle streghe nell’antica diocesi di Como (XV–XVIII secolo), co-authored with Valerio Giorgetta (WriteUp, 2024).
An independent researcher, he works as a consultant for radio and television programs and as an organizer of cultural events; in 2015 he oversaw the creation of Italy’s first permanent exhibition dedicated to magic and folk medicine, the Museo Etnostorico della Stregoneria in Triora (IM). As a subject-matter specialist, he has participated in numerous conferences and published his work in scholarly journals, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, focusing in particular on campaigns against superstition in relation to the emergence, between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period in the heart of Western Europe, of the belief-legend of the “secta strigiarum.”