She is an author of non-fiction books and journal articles about folklore, religion, religious festivals, foodways, witchcraft and Neo-Paganism in Europe and the United States.

From 1960 to 1976, her family spent summers living in Italy, specifically Rome, San Felice Circeo, Lazio and Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany.

[3] After working on post-doctoral research in Italy with a Fulbright fellowship in 1989, Magliocco began her career teaching classes in Folklore and Anthropology.

[5] Magliocco did fieldwork in northwestern Sardinia (Italy) during the 1980s, studying the effect of socio-economic transformation on the traditional festivals of a pastoral highland community.

Magliocco's studies of contemporary Neopagans in the San Francisco Bay Area provided the subject material for Witching Culture and Neo-Pagan Sacred Art and Altars.