Francesco Pellizzi
studied the Classics and Comparative Religions at the University of Rome, then Anthropology in Paris, writing a dissertation on the native religion and mythology of the North-West Amazon basin, under the direction of Claud Levi-Strauss (D.Litt., Rome, 1967). After joining as a Harkness Fellow the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University (M.A. 1969), he has remained there as Associate in Middle American Ethnology (since 1974) and Co-founder and Editor (since 1981) of the journal Res: Anthropology and aesthetics, dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of art and cult objects.

Between 1984 and 1997, he also founded and edited, for Cambridge University Press, the book series Res: Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics. For the Menil Foundation, he has been, since 1991, Editorial Coordinator of the multi-volume project The Image of the Black in Western Art. In the 1980s he was also Editorial Counsel of Normal and Co-founder and Associate Editor of XXIst Century, two art and literature magazines. He has organized two international anthropological conferences: Las Civilizaciones Indigenas de Chiapas en el Mundo Contemporaneo (San las Casas, Mexico, 1974) and Ethnicities and Nations: Pattern of Inter-Cultural Relations in Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (Houston, Texas, 1983).