Richmond, the American International University in London

Faculty Member, Humanities, Social Sciences & Communications

Associate Professor of Visual Culture and Director of the MA in Art History

About

My research interests are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, encompassing indigenous and prehistoric visual and material culture in shamanistic/animist communities; and the re-presentation of the past in the present by contemporary pagans and neo-shamans, and the implications of such engagements for heritage management. I have published extensively on these topics, having authored Shamans / neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies and Contemporary Pagans (Routledge 2003, short-listed for the Folklore Society Prize 2003), co-authored the Historical Dictionary of Shamanism (Scarecrow Press 2007) and co-edited A Permeability of Boundaries: New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore (Oxford BAR 2001) and, most recently, Antiquaries and Archaists: The Past in the Past, the Past in the Present (Spire Press 2009). With Dr Jenny Blain, an anthropologist at Sheffield Hallam University, I co-direct the Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights Project, examining pagan engagements with the past (see www.sacredsites.org.uk). The findings of the first five years of the project were published as Sacred Sites, Contested Rites/Rights: Pagan Engagements with Archaeological Monuments (Sussex Academic Press 2007). My current work, in preparation for a monograph, examines the perceived interface between shamanism and art from prehistory to the present.

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