About the speaker:

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.

The Murder of Ann Tennant

Ann Tennant of Long Compton was brutally murdered in 1875 by a farm labourer who believed she was a witch. This talk includes summaries from newspaper reports and concludes with a brief look at the murder of Charles Walton at Meon Hill in 1945.

The History and Endurance of Witchcraft Parts One and Two

Each part takes around 45 minutes plus Q&A and can be combined into a single session if required.

The first part of the talk looks at witchcraft from an historical perspective, leading to the beginning of the 20^th century and the development of ideas around modern Pagan Witchcraft. Part two picks up the story in 1951 and looks at the way in which modern Pagan Witchcraft developed following the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951.

Witches of the Cotswolds

A look at some of the characters around the Cotswolds area (includes Long Compton, Tysoe, Stratford upon Avon, and local villages) up to the 20^th century.

Witches, Fairies, and Familiar Spirits

This talk focuses upon some fascinating characters from the 12^th to 19^th centuries, whose lives were bound up with fairies and shapeshifting

Humour and Satire in the Long Nineteenth Century

This presentation discusses some of the satirical content of the press drawn from newspapers published between 1850 to 1899.

Witchcraft and the Press in Victorian Britain

This talk focuses upon an intriguing aspect of the content of Victorian media and discusses

the way that witchcraft featured in satirical commentary in newspaper reports of political speeches and debates between 1850 and 1899. It concludes with a consideration of how this feeds in to the ideas of ‘fake media’ in today’s world.

Witchcraft and Victorian Edutainment

This talk looks at how witchcraft was featured in community events such as lectures, meetings, sermons, dinner speeches and toasts, fairs and fetes, and political discourse, during the Victorian period. The talk is illustrated with examples drawn from newspapers published between 1850 and 1899.

Sir James Frazer and The Golden Bough

From the moment of its first appearance in 1890, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion by Sir James George Frazer (1854 – 1941) was highly influential in academic circles and sold to a general reading public in staggering numbers. This talk looks at how and why The Golden Bough had – and still has – such a widespread and lasting popular appeal.

Resisting the Invader: Witchcraft in World War II (This talk lasts an hour plus Q&A)

Numerous accounts of a witchcraft ritual taking place in England during WWII have been published over the last 70 years. It has been repeated so frequently that the story is firmly embedded within the folklore of modern Britain, and the narrative has become so widespread that seeking information about it using Google returns more than 32 million references.

This presentation looks at the story to understand its possible origins and how the narrative has developed over the past 70 years. It situates the story within the context of everyday life in southern England during the war years and reflects on its role as a formative narrative among generations of modern Pagans.