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Owen Davies

@odavies9.bsky.social
4.9K followers 1.3K following 659 posts

Historian and Folklorist. Writes books on witches, magic, ghosts, religion, popular medicine, and folklore.

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Reposted by Owen Davies
Brian Groom @groomb.bsky.social · 20h
Next Tuesday, all welcome.
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Ghosts. One of 240 images from my forthcoming (2027) book on the global, visual history of ghosts. Franz Sedlacek "Ghosts on a Tree" (1933)
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Hellebore @helleborezine.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
⚡️IT’S HERE!⚡️ Ruined temples, living myths, riddles and enigmas, Medieval mystics, a gas-lit world of secret societies and energy grids, psychedelic revivals, and sonic experiments at the City of the Dead. 👉🏼 Gaze into the eyes of the sphinx and pre-order The Mystery Issue on helleborezine.com
A woman standing by a sphinx, the wind beating her cape
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Michael Spicer @michaelspicer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Most TV is just this now.
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A beautiful day for welcoming the newest cohort of MA Folklore Studies students @herts.ac.uk. The world definitely needs more folklorists (i.e. people who are curious about - and value - the customs we practice, the stories we tell & the beliefs we hold)
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Dr Jennifer Evans @historianjen.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'm a so pleased that the exhibition I co-curated with @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social is now open at the Chelsea Physick Garden. Running until the 15th Nov, it explores the autumnal plants of the garden through the work of pioneering botanical illustrator Anne Pratt.
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Alasdair Beckett-King @misterabk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Is it me, or does Michaelmas start earlier every year?
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mattie lubchansky @mattielubchansky.com · 29/09/2026
awoke this morning with a Vision
that diagram showing  the SUV blind spot in the front but it's lowly worm driving his little applemobile
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Getting dozens of AI generated spam emails a week now purporting to be from publisher editors, well-known BBC journalists, and people with no proper name given, etc. All "interested in my recent books". If you are genuine then I'm sorry if I don't respond. Most have gmail addresses.
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Bob Fry @bobfry.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
#StandingStoneSunday The Longstone of Minchinhampton. Various items deposited there - see below.
An ancient monolith stands in a pasture. It is irregular in shape, rather eroded and pitted, with two holes that go right through it
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🍁 🍂 Meet Anne Pratt, Victorian botanical illustrator and researcher. Her work on the folklore and medicinal properties of autumn flora is the focus of mine and Jennifer Evans's new exhibition 'Plantlore' at Chelsea Physic Garden 🍂 🍁 www.chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk/plantlore-is...
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"Troubled by Faith". I've never been disappointed by my publishers' book covers, but this is a favourite of mine. The image is Alfred Kubin's "The Vampire" (c.1900).
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Looking forward to this event in lovely Glossop on 8 Oct - come say hi! darkpeakbooks.co.uk/event/an-eve...
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ah yes, the "professorship of practice"! This is how professorships have been devalued as a historic title of research contribution. Anyone can now be awarded a Professorship of Practice if they are rich enough or served enough time in management/business. www.theguardian.com/education/20...
theguardian.com
Backlash as Indian oil heir made professor of sustainability by Newcastle University
Role for Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest person, who also runs a controversial mega-zoo, met with incredulity
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Manchester University Press @manchesterup.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Spotted in Waterstones Manchester Arndale, signed copies of Folklore in paperback on the BOGOF table! Perfect for your TBR as we move into Autumn and spooky season 🎃 pick up your copy today! @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social @odavies9.bsky.social #folklore #booksky
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Christine Corcos @lpcprof.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
New acquisition! @odavies9.bsky.social
The cover of Owen Davies’ new book The Art of Divination. In front of a porcelain lamp and a stack of art books.
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
They both honoured the ritual of the Boggart's Toe - balance on it and your wish will be granted
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Why was this Lincoln Imp found up the chimney of a C17th-house? You can read some of my theories in this OA article in this brilliant special issue of Revenant edited by @rorywaterman.bsky.social & Anna Milon www.revenantjournal.com/issues/linco...
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
30 years ago since I had my first academic articles published. Subjects: hag riding & charming. Not an easy sell at the time...
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Things I won’t miss when I retire from Higher Education shortly: endless restructures; tasks that used to be done by dedicated administrators; silo culture between academics & support staff; poor anonymous peer reviewing; no offices. Things I will miss: enthusiastic students; excellent colleagues.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
'The pledge by the UK’s new science minister to adopt an “unrelenting focus” on science has prompted concern and confusion.' To put it mildly and very diplomatically.
timeshighereducation.com
Chris McDonald’s ‘unrelenting’ science focus raises concerns
Arts and humanities leaders worried by new minister’s ‘very odd’ comments suggesting his sole concern is science R&D
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Good luck to all those university students starting shortly who will find their departments looking dramatically different, due to job cuts, to how they looked when they applied ....
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
So, my next book "Legends and Landscape: An Alternative History of Britain" is now with the publishers. Sept 2027. Plenty of postcard images, thought not this one. Anyone recognise this legendary English landscape?
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Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
90 years ago, Parliament responded to the rise of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts by passing the Public Order Act, which banned political uniforms, private militias and the threat of force for political objects. The debates make very resonant reading today. Here's the Liberal Robert Bernays. (Short 🧵)
You cannot conduct a fair match when one side is playing with a ball and the other with bombs and, if democracy is to survive, it must be conducted according to definite and recognised rule. One of them is that no political party should resort to any weapon other than reason and argument. The introduction of private armies, as I see it, strikes at the root of democracy. I know it is contended that the Blackshirts are not armed and, therefore, are not an army, but I do not think that argument can be upheld. … Uniformed men in military formation suggest, and are meant to suggest, the idea of force. It is no argument to reply that at this or that demonstration no force is intended. It is an inescapable fact that a uniform in politics symbolises force, to be used either now or in the future.
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
From now on I shall only talk folklore to a background of shiny streamers beneath a giant disco ball
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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Today's answer to the question what is Hookland?
What is Hookland?

Hookland is England as seen from the ghost train.

It is a fierce refusal to let psychogeographers tell you that when you talk about spirits of place you can’t really believe in them. It is all the books you borrowed time and time again from the library as a child – encyclopaedias of horror films, Usborne’s Worlds of the Unknown UFOs and Charles Berlitz’s The Bermuda Triangle.

It is walking home through the woods in November mist and feeling that the place has monsters, not the sort they made into Aurora model kits, but old, nameless things that are fed by the fear you’ve had of this place since that murder a few years back. It is the terror of living in a haunted landscape. It is the delight of living in a profoundly haunted landscape. Hookland is the place that you can almost allow yourself to believe in magic again before realising it is a territory you already inhabit. Shared space where all the broken memories of childhood are resuscitated and walking alongside you.

It is knowing the names of Soviet spacemen orbiting above and feeling the youthful power if recognising which mushrooms are poisonous. It is sneaking into fields to release crows from cruel traps and thinking up mad schemes to raise money to buy fireworks when the air becomes rich with the intoxicating smell of bonfires. It’s being more scared by gaudy movie posters for films that you haven’t ever seen than being afraid of the things your parents constantly warn you about.

It is knowing that everywhere is layers of story, layers of memory and realising you may be the ghost of someone else’s future.

It is a French radio station on AM, full of songs you hear and instantly love, but will spend the rest of your life trying to remember what the title was, which band it was.

On its jagged rocks, its snaring brambles, fragments of ripped cloth that you know are clues to something you have forgotten. Something important you cannot unlock.

It is home.
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National Folklore Survey for England @nfsengland.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
We have two delights for you today: a reproduction of a 2005 article in which @davidwclarke.bsky.social interviews Professor John Widdowson, and our final episode of the second series of Folklore Matters where David and John join Andrew Robinson for a BIG conversation about all things folklore
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Katrina Navickas @katrinanavickas.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If you're interested in submitting a book proposal to our Radical Histories series, give us a shout. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/radic...
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Radical Histories - Manchester University Press
The Radical Histories series encourages innovative and field-defining research in the history of individuals, groups, movements and ideas which challenged the political, social and cultural status quo...
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Had a great time launching the paperback of Folklore at Topping Books in York yesterday ❤️ It was lovely meeting so many new people and chatting about their favourite folklore. Other stops on the book tour include Manchester on 6 Sep and Glossop on 8 Oct
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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Reading work email today and all I can say is that it's amazing how flexible course provision can suddenly be when you've fired most of the staff and teaching starts in 2 weeks. Almost as if academic regulations, credit-counts and the Office for Students (ho ho) don't exist.
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The latest Google capitulation on Lake Ontario. The French government has been proactive for years in restricting USA tech giants from its educational provision. Good. It can be done and should be done everywhere.
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Lunatraktors @lunatraktors.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Beginning our UK tour in style reading @odavies9.bsky.social and @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social's Folklore on the ferry. First stops... 26.9 Norwich Puppet Theatre 4.9 Cafe#9 Sheffield 9.9 Folklore Rooms Brighton 👉 www.lunatraktors.space #Radical #Traditional #Music
E-reader on a table by a ferry window with a blue evening sky.
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Author moan. Every week now I get multiple spurious, presumably AI formulated emails, about my books and how they can be promoted better. Go away. Go away.
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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
My last talk of the year. It will focus on re-enchantment as resistance and include tales of Woodwosing, being re-enchanted during the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution and waiting on the fetches of the future dead. www.tickettailor.com/events/tread...
tickettailor.com
Buy tickets – Hookland with David Southwell – In-Person Lecture – Treadwells Books
Hookland with David Southwell – In-Person Lecture – Treadwells Books, Thu 24 Sep 2026 - The creator of England's imagined lost county on re-enchantment as resistance. Through near-daily postings in th...
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
When Ronald Hutton describes it as "The best overall view of the subject currently available, written by its most dynamic partnership of scholars", who are we to argue? 🤣 FOLKLORE is out in paperback this September @manchesterup.bsky.social: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526180407/
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
FOLKLORE! Soon to be in beautiful shiny paperback, and launching across the country - first stop: York's Topping Books on 1st September. Join @odavies9.bsky.social & I discussing our favourite folklore by signing up here www.toppingbooks.co.uk/events/york/...
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Katrina Navickas @katrinanavickas.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
If you want to learn more, read leading folklore scholar Ceri Houlbrook's work on love locks lovelockdiaries.wordpress.com
lovelockdiaries.wordpress.com
The Love-Lock Diaries
Ceri's catalogue of love-locks
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
As thousands of research academics are made redundant the whole system of free/cheap peer review will collapse.
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The wonders of bird migration. Latest cuckoo update from @btobirds.bsky.social
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Great to see Osterley House, National Trust engage again with the long legacy of the East India Company and its material cultures in Hounslow. Exciting to see another exhibition on this theme: Journeys: Wedding Shawls, Baghs and Phulkaris from the Karun Thakar Collection, open until 1 November. 1/4
easterneye.biz
Karun Thakar brings British Asians into Osterley House with National Trust exhibition
Exhibition of shawls invites visitors to rediscover estate's India links
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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 02/08/2026
In late 2023, the Society spent a day with Hertfordshire’s historians. We saw the quality, creativity and distinctiveness of teaching, research and engagement. We were told by a (now departed) senior manager that History was ‘a portfolio the university will guard very carefully’. bit.ly/4hLediN
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Thinking through the unedifying, un-evidence-based rush to an undefined, apparently unmodelled paradigm of 'specialisation, what's being lost/threatened? Herts History was an excellent example of performing to a top standard in REF, but also much more than that. Questions to think with include: 1/4
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
So a whole lot of my talented Humanities colleagues are now unemployed as of today. A lot of understandable concern over Exeter. But for over two decades my Hums colleagues were in the top quartile for their research contribution to society. History top 10. Now gone with only a national whisper.
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Emma Jacobs @emmavj.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Every commentator saying too many kids go to university has to tell their own kid to not do a degree
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Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
The only reason Russell Group Humanities grads in politics and journalism chuff on and on about 'learning a trade' is the focus groups of hero voters assembled by... Russell Group grads. It's grim.
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Manchester University Press @manchesterup.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Every community has its legend – but not many have a legend about a pigman. Author and historian @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social says: "These kind of stories are macabre, they are thrilling, they are frightening." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 'Folklore' is out in paperback in September. #booksky
bbc.co.uk
How a mythical pigman became a Cannock Chase legend
The myth tells of a half-man, half-pig hybrid created during World War Two in Staffordshire.
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Jane Winters @jfwinters.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Royal Historical Society open meeting (online) for historians working in universities, 4 Aug 2026 - ‘The crisis in UK higher education: the future for history’ www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crisis.... It’s a definite sign of the times that places are almost gone.
eventbrite.co.uk
The Crisis in UK HE: the Future for History
An open meeting for historians in UK higher education on what is needed to best support and protect the profession and discipline.
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Ceri Houlbrook @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Folklore!! If that got your attention then you might be interested in pre-ordering mine and @odavies9.bsky.social book in its beautiful paperback design through @waterstones.bsky.social - 25% off if you pre-order before end of day tomorrow
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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
For those wanting a signed copy of the book, a Right To Reside card or to buy from one the best esoteric bookshops around, here is the promised link to Hookland at @treadwells-books.bsky.social. www.treadwells-london.com/product-page...
treadwells-london.com
Hookland Fragments Volume One - David Southwell | Treadwells
Discover the Fortean mysteries and folkloric history of Hookland, England's lost county. Created by David Southwell and documented extensively on social media for many years, the fictional Hookland ha...
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Owen Davies @odavies9.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
A sneak preview of some of the contents in my forthcoming book "Art of Divination: A Visual History". Available for pre-order. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ktY...
youtube.com
Art of Divination by Owen Davies
YouTube video by Yale Press
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