Bio: Jennifer Ball
"Based on the Wirral, England (UK), Jennifer is currently completing the final year of her PhD at Bangor University, Wales (UK), researching into the LGBTQ+ community within Paganism. More specifically, she is looking into the affects of heteronormative and cisnormative themes that can be prevalent across many different Pagan denominations. A research project that has also featured within the Wild Hunt community notes.
Jennifer began her studies on Paganism after writing her undergraduate dissertation on the changes of witch iconography in recent histories. As this discussion bled into the reclamation of the term “witch” within the Wiccan, Witchcraft and Goddess communities, this ignited a passion within her to continue to research Paganism both academically and personally.
She later completed a Research Masters (MRes) that she broke down into three interesting topics. These discussions were entitled: “Commodified Witchcraft: The influence of the 1990s “media witch craze” on Wicca as a religion today.”, “The revival of nature-based religions: An investigation into the ancient roots of contemporary Druidry.”, and ““Paganism is fast-developing as the new religion of the twenty-first century”: An investigation into the rapid growth of Paganism in contemporary western society.”
She has spoken publicly on these various topics, most notably for the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (Boscastle, England, UK) at their equinox colloquium in 2019, and most recently in Universität Luzerne Switzerland at their Structuring Diversity, Structuring Religion conference in 2023."
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Host Dean Jones is a Librarian, Cookbook Reviewer, and writer. Originally from San Diego and having lived his teen years in the Pacific Northwest, Dean has lived for over 30 years in the wonderful but barely affordable San Francisco Bay Area. Dean has been published in “Amoral Beatitudes Magazine” and writes on Medium for “One Table One World,” “The Cookbook for All,” “An Idea,” and “Authors what are you reading.” Contact Dean at callingthequarterspodcast@gmail.com You can listen to my other podcast using the following link https://linktr.ee/thewellseasonedlibrarian
Calling the Quarters Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/callingthequarterspodcast/
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Theme Music is by Lexin_Music from Pixabay
We went to thank Llewllyn Worldwide for help in finding guests for the program. https://www.llewellyn.com/