Witches at Night: Creative Responses to Early Modern Witch Trials
In the 1613 pamphlet Witches Apprehended, Examined and Executed, a servant gossips about a local woman he believes to be a witch. As he speaks, he is struck by a […]
Category Archives: Apotropaia
Workshop on Medieval Magic: Future Directions
Wednesday 26 June 2019 IAS Ground, South Wing, UCL Convened by Sophie Page (UCL) and Catherine Rider (Exeter) The recently published The Routledge History of Medieval Magic (January 2019) brought […]
Nordic Noir: Creating Denmark’s First Museum of Witchcraft
In December 2018 a small group from the Museum of Southwest Jutland in Denmark, consisting of Lulu Anne Hansen (Head of Historical Research), Mette Slyngborg (Curator), Louise Lindgaard (Research Assistant), […]
Conference Report: Living in a Magical World: Inner Lives, 1300–1900
Historians have learned to appreciate the supernatural as integral to past lives. No longer are magical beliefs and practices anachronistically condescended to as ‘superstitions’, entertained only by a credulous minority […]
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic: Reflections on a Big Editing Project
This post was first published on the blog of the Exeter Centre for Medieval Studies. I’m very pleased to announce that the Routledge History of Medieval Magic, edited by Sophie Page (UCL) […]
Magical Thoughts: The Making of Spellbound
Our exhibition Spellbound: Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, led by Sophie Page with art historian Marina Wallace, has disappeared into the ether and […]
Image Magic: Drawing the History of Sorcery, Ritual, and Witchcraft
In October last year I was sent an email accompanied by a zip folder full of images; these included a witch and her familiars, a woman suffering from convulsions, an […]
Prepare to be Spellbound: Our Ashmolean Exhibition is Now Open!
I’m delighted to announce that Spellbound: Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, the project’s exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on which I’ve been leading with art historian Marina […]
Spheres of Influence: The Magical History of the Witch Ball
Witch balls are globes of glass, with a hole in the top, often suspended in doorways or windows. They were made in most glass factories across Europe as glassblowers’ ‘whimsies’ […]
Object Lessons: The Concealed, Revealed, and Displayed
‘Any idea of value?’. This question was posed to me by the coordinators of the project’s exhibition Spellbound: Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, opening at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and […]
Inner Lives 