*** This talk is • FREE! • But booking is essential. Reserve your ticket here ***

What comes to mind when you envision a séance? Do you see the atmospheric drama of a Victorian drawing room, hands clasped in the flickering candlelight? Or perhaps giggling teenagers nervously trying out a Ouija board? What probably doesn’t come to mind are UCL professors conducting scientific experiments, or activists fighting for the rights of women and the working class. 

Our modern-day understanding of the Spiritualism movement in the late 1800s has often been misunderstood and reduced to parlour tricks; but the ideas shared and explored at that time broke through boundaries of gender and class dynamics. It was a social movement as much as a paranormal movement, and women in particular were leaders within it. 

British Spiritualism rose in tandem with the British Suffragette movement and, while there are clear differences between the two, by delving into the birth of British Spiritualism we discover a newly blooming and subversive national identity of rebellion that continued to change and grow throughout the 20th century − fuelled by the tragedies of two world wars that gave the movement momentum. In this illustrated lecture, Dr Romany Reagan will delve into the origins and multifaceted dynamics of the Spiritualism movement to explore how a belief in ghosts was just the beginning.