Jacob Bessen is an anthropologist who studies religion, migration, architecture, and economy in Sicily and the wider Mediterranean. He obtained a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Toronto in 2026. His current book project explores how ideals of neighborliness mediate the intersection of immigration and emigration in a depopulating town in rural central Sicily. Tracing spatial idioms and practices of creating and maintaining forms of mutuality across difference, his work situates these dynamics within a long Mediterranean history of sacred obligations to neighbors. His research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and Fondazione con Il Sud.