Owen Davies (born 1969) is a British historian who specialises in the history of magic, witchcraft, ghosts, and popular medicine. He is currently Professor in History at the

University of Hertfordshire The University of Hertfordshire (UH) is a public university in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. The university is based largely in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Its antecedent institution, Hatfield Technical College, was founded in 1948 and was ident ...

and has been described as Britain's "foremost academic expert on the history of magic".

Early life and education

Davies's interest in the history of witchcraft and magic developed out of a childhood interest in folklore and mythology, which was spawned in part from reading the books of

Alan Garner Alan Garner (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. Much of his work is rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native coun ...

. From around the age of sixteen, he also became interested in archaeology and began to get involved with field-walking and earthwork surveying. He then went on to study archaeology and history at

Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...

and spent many weeks over the next six years helping excavate Bronze Age and Neolithic sites in France and England, mostly in the area around

Avebury Avebury () is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in ...

. He developed a strong interest in archaeology in general, and the ritual monuments and practices of the Neolithic and

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

. From Cardiff, he went on to write a doctorate at

Lancaster University , mottoeng = Truth lies open to all , established = , endowment = £13.9 million , budget = £317.9 million , type = Public , city = Bailrigg, City of Lancaster , country = England , coor = , campus = Bailrigg , faculty ...

. Completed in 1995, Davies's thesis looked at the continuation and decline of popular belief in witchcraft and magic from the

Witchcraft Act 1735 The Witchcraft Act 1735 (9 Geo. 2 c. 5) was an Act of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1735 which made it a crime for a person to claim that any human being had magical powers or was guilty of practising witchcraft. With this, t ...

to the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 (1991–1994).

Career

Davies has authored and edited 15 books and numerous research articles. He has been a key collaborator in a number of large-scale historical research projects. From 2010 to 2015, Davies was Co-Investigator on 'Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse', a Wellcome Trust funded project exploring "the meanings, treatment, and uses of the criminal corpse". Davies was also a Co-Investigator on the major Leverhulme-funded project 'Inner Lives: Emotions, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300-1900'. Davies and University of Hertfordshire colleague Dr Ceri Houlbrook are currently Co-Investigators in 'Bottles Concealed and Revealed', an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project investigating witch bottles. Davies has been based at the University of Hertfordshire since the early 2000s. In 2019, he instigated a Folklore Studies MA at the University of Hertfordshire, which is currently the only academic qualification of its kind in England and Wales. In 2020, Davies was elected President of the Folklore Society.

Selected publications

* * *Davies, Owen and Blécourt, Willem de (editors) (2004). '' Beyond the witch trials: witchcraft and magic in enlightenment Europe''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. .

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It wa ...

186315672. *Davies, Owen and Blécourt, Willem de (editors) (2004). ''Witchcraft continued: popular magic in modern Europe''. Manchester: Manchester University Press. .

784959128. * * *Davies, Owen (2007). ''The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. .

145379850. *Davies, Owen and Barry, Jonathan (editors) (2007) ''Palgrave advances in witchcraft historiography''. Basingstoke ngland Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. .

122702023. * *Davies, Owen (editor) (2010) ''Ghosts: A Social History''. London: Pickering & Chatto. 2010. .

501394897. * *Davies, Owen (2012). ''Magic: A Very Short Introduction''. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .

749871159. *Davies, Owen (2013). ''America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft after Salem.'' Oxford. .

812686039. *Davies, Owen and Matteoni, Francesca (2017).
Executing Magic in the Modern Era: Criminal Bodies and the Gallows in Popular Medicine
'. Cham: Springer International Publishing. . *Davies, Owen (editor) (2017) ''The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic.'' Oxford, United Kingdom. . OCLC 972537073. *Davies, Owen (2018). ''A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War.'' Oxford, United Kingdom. . OCLC 1022082619.

References

External links

Top 10 Grimoires
selected by Owen Davies for The Guardian.
The Best Books on Magic
recommended by Owen Davies, for Five Books. {{DEFAULTSORT:Davies, Owen Living people Historians of witchcraft 20th-century Welsh historians Alumni of Lancaster University Alumni of Cardiff University Academics of the University of Hertfordshire 1969 births Presidents of the Folklore Society 21st-century Welsh historians