My research interests are traditional knowledge systems and cosmologies as well as new and emergent religious and cultural movements, including contemporary Paganism. I am interested in sacred geographies, landscape lore, mythology, otherworld traditions, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).
Long abstract
I am interested in the intellectual histories of the disciplines of anthropology, folklore, ethnology, and the study of religions and in how the theorizing of cultures in different eras has given rise to different perspectives on peoples, for example conceptualizations of the European "peasantry" or "folk" as well as concepts of indigenous peoples ranging from "primitive" and "savage" to romanticized or infantilized. Particular theoretical models and schemas, though products of their time, have resulted in attitudes which persevere both inside and outside of the academy and which subtly underpin how certain knowledge systems are viewed. For instance, traditional knowledge of healing, agricultural methods and weather lore, has been re-framed as "superstition" and it is worth considering the impact of the aforementioned cultural perspectives when it comes to the ways in which terms like folklore, mythology and religion are used (and when they are not used) depending on context. In consideration of this broad background to ideas permeating about cultures in our world, I am interested in people's connection to place through myth, legend, language and local lore in European contexts, particularly people's spiritual connection to their environment. In an "unwriting" of those aforementioned paradigms and theorizing of cultures, I'm interested in approaches that explore this cultural material as traditional or indigenous knowledge systems.