The traditional stereotype of the witch as an ugly old woman who harms others using supernatural means has a strong hold within the popular imagination. But in modern society other types of witches have emerged, including those who use supernatural means to benefit others, those who follow a nature-based neo-pagan religion, and those who resist the imposition of patriarchal structures and hierarchies.

Introduction: Watch here for free

Module 1: Gendering of the Witch: Legacies of Common Magic
with Dr Jennifer Farrell

Module 2: From Sorcery to Heresy: Making Witchcraft Possible
with Dr Jennifer Farrell

Module 3: Practising Magic: Everyday Magic in Early Modern England - watch a Preview for free
with Dr Tabitha Stanmore

Module 4: Scottish Witches: Fairy Lovers and Fairy Victims
Prof. Diane Purkiss

Module 5: Prosecuting Witchcraft: With Hunts of Anglia in the 1640s
with Dr Tabitha Stanmore

Module 6: Witchcraft in the 20th and 21st Centuries
with Dr Julia Phillips

Module 7: Entertaining Witches: From the Land of Oz to Hogwarts
with Dr Julia Phillips

Speakers

Dr Julia Phillips is Hon Senior Research Associate and lecturer at the University of Bristol. She received her PhD for her research examining how witches and witchcraft were featured in newspapers in Victorian Britain. Her work has been published in books, academic journals, and popular magazines, and she is a regular presenter at conferences and events. Her primary research interests are the study of witchcraft in the 19th century and the development of modern Pagan Witchcraft in the 20th/21st centuries. 

Diane Purkiss is Professor of English at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of Keble College. She has published on witchcraft, fairies, and also on the English Civil War, the occasion of England's biggest witchhunt. She has been in more than a dozen television documentaries; she even has an IMdb entry and a Wikipedia page… She has spoken to general audiences at numerous literary festivals and to many local history societies.

Dr Jennifer Farrell is a lecturer in medieval history at the University of Exeter. With interests in both gender and the medieval supernatural, her research and teaching focuses on cultural developments and their relationship to socio-political changes in Western Europe during the high and late middle ages (c. 1000- c. 1500). She has published on subjects including medieval prophecy; fairies in medieval history and romance; the relationship between literary representations of fairies, the supernatural, and gender; and is currently working on a book focused on Geoffrey of Monmouth and the origins of the Arthurian legends. Her teaching has included undergraduate and postgraduate courses looking at medieval gender and sexuality, universities and learning in the middle ages, magic in the middle ages, sexualities across time and space, and the legends of King Arthur. 

Dr Tabitha Stanmore is a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme-funded Seven County Witch Hunt Project at the University of Exeter, and is specialist in medieval and early modern English magic and witchcraft. Her monograph, Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service Magic in England from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Era, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2022. Her first book for general readers, Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic, was published in 2024 with the Bodley Head. She has written for TIME, The Conversation and The Telegraph, among others, and featured on Radio 3’s Free Thinking and BBC 4’s Plague Fiction.