A one-day series of online talks and workshops from world-leading experts.

Explore witchcraft through history, psychology, and spirituality at this summit. From the medieval codification of witchcraft to the rise of Spiritualism and the search for identity in today's online communities, uncover how the figure of the witch has been understood, feared, and reimagined across centuries.

Witchcraft has taken many forms – a spiritual practice, a tool of persecution, a lens for exploring female sexuality, and, in the digital age, a source of community and identity. This summit brings together historians, psychologists, and lecturers to examine these different threads: from the medieval trials that shaped early ideas of witchcraft, to the Spiritualist movement, to the psychological drivers behind belief in magic, to the modern communities forming online.

Join and gain fresh perspectives from leading experts, learn how witchcraft has been shaped by religion, regional history, sexuality, psychology, and today's digital culture.

👭 Learn with like-minded people

📜 Explore the history, evolution and symbolic power of witchcraft

🎓 Learn from world-leading experts in witchraft, spirituality and psychology

🔮 Enjoy a full day of online talks, workshops, and Q&As

Talks and workshop include:

Spiritualism and Witchcraft

Magic, Female Sexuality and the Medieval Codification of Witchcraft

The Devil in the Fens

Generation Magic: The quest for community and identity in the Digital Age

The Psychology of Witchcraft

Speaker Bios:

Dr Julia Phillips is an Hons 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.

Dr Jennifer Farrell is a lecturer in medieval history at the University of Exeter, specialising in the intersection of gender and the supernatural in medieval culture. Her research focuses on the cultural and socio-political transformations of Western Europe during the High and Late Middle Ages (c.1000-1500). She has published on topics such as medieval prophecy, fairies in both history and romance, and how supernatural figures intersect with gender and literature. Dr. Farrell is currently writing a book on Geoffrey of Monmouth and the origins of Arthurian Legends.

Dr Jessica Lloyd May is a historian and folklorist, who specialises in contemporary and historical expressions of community, identity, and ritual. Her work explores the ways traditions, from folklore customs to witchcraft and romantic myth, intersect with contemporary culture. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Nottingham and has been published in Český Lid Journal, The Conversation, and The Feminine Macabre, and presented her research internationally. She is also the director of a tabletop gaming company, Spectre Miniatures, which has led her to contributing to a recent AHRC IAA project looking at the gamification of archive materials as learning aids.

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.

Dr Vivianne Crowley is a specialist in the psychology of religion and spirituality, and the work of Carl Gustav Jung. Formerly Lecturer in Psychology of Religion at King’s College University of London and a program committee member of the American Academy of Religion, she is an international teacher of Wicca and magic, who has been an esoteric practitioner for over 50 years. She is the author of the best-selling classic Wicca: the Old Religion for the Modern World and many books on contemporary psychology and spirituality, including Jung: Journey of Transformation. Her recent book Wild Once, published by Penguin, is an inspiring guide to living a magical life. She is a member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, the Irish Society for the Study of Religion, the Irish Society for the Study of Esotericism, the American Academy of Religion and the British Psychological Society.

Seed Talks Testimonials

⭐ It was amazing. It was really detailed and sensitive to the subject matter and the audience. I thou

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