Category Archives: Talk

Feminism, ghosts, London, Romany Reagan, spiritualism, Talk

Live talk at the Bank of England Museum in London, Tuesday 11th November 2025, 12:30pm: ‘A (Séance) Room of One’s Own: The socially subversive origins of British Spiritualism’

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*** 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. 

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Folklore, ghosts, Moonlore, Nature Lore, Romany Reagan, Talk, witches

Live talk at the Folk & Fable Festival in Battle, East Sussex, Saturday 23rd August 2025, 3pm: ‘Witches, Demons, Faeries & Ghosts: Our dreamscapes of legend & lore’

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Come join me and many other speakers, artists and performers for this wonderful festival in Battle, East Sussex celebrating all things Folk & Fable! There will be food stalls, local delightful boozes, story tents, local crafts — and lots of fun and fabulous people coming together to share a great long August bank holiday weekend flirting with the weird side.

Yours truly will be giving a talk at 3pm on the Saturday of the festival, no need to prebook, just come on down and enjoy the descent into madness…

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Botany, Feminism, Folk Healers, Folklore, London, Medicine, Museum of the Home, Nature, Romany Reagan, Talk, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Live talk at the Museum of the Home in London, Thursday 12th June 2025, 6:30pm: ‘Ancient Herbal Remedies & Fertility Management — The Secrets of Mediaeval & Early Modern Midwives’

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*** Buy tickets here!!! ***

Join Dr Romany Reagan and Kerry Lemon for an exclusive after-hours event at the Museum of the Home, followed by a group walk to Ruup & Form for an intimate viewing of SIMPLING led by the artist. We’ll begin in the herb gardens at the Museum of the Home, where there will be a wine reception and access to explore the Gardens Through Time after hours. Then Romany will give a talk exploring the roots of women-led fertility management through the lens of herbal history. We’ll uncover the often-overlooked practices of mediaeval and early modern healers — women who passed down their knowledge orally, from mother to daughter, from midwife to apprentice. Their methods of community care were rarely recorded in written form, so uncovering these methods of reproductive control are their most secret knowledge of all.

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Feminism, London, Museums, Romany Reagan, Talk

Live talk at Sutton House in London, Friday March 8th 7pm 2024 for International Women’s Day: ‘A Quiet Roar — Untold stories of the Women of Sutton House’

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*** Buy tickets here!!! ***

Ticket price includes lecture entry, pop-up exhibition, and wine reception.

This International Women’s Day, join us for an evening lecture with resident research fellow Dr Romany Reagan where she’ll share her discoveries of how the women of Sutton House fit into the nation’s history! Times: 6.30pm entry, Talk 7-8pm

History is most often recorded as a long list of men and their deeds, with only passing mention of their wives. However, within the history of Sutton House, we have the opportunity to uncover a different story. The house has been a residence for over 500 years; tallying up the records, we find that women held a controlling interest in the property for more than half of its history. This means that the main narrative of Sutton House is actually not the story of men and their wives — it’s the story of women and their goals.

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Feminism, Folk Healers, London, Museum of the Home, Nature, Romany Reagan, Talk, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Live talk at the Museum of the Home in London Sat 30th Sept: Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers 

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***Buy tickets here!***

Do you have mint tea in your cupboard? Grow rosemary in your garden? Or perhaps eat ginger when you have an upset stomach?

Then your home is a living museum, continuing the traditions that women have practised for hundreds of years for health and healing. This wisdom comes from the time when food was medicine, the kitchen was the apothecary, and healing was women’s domain.

Marking the close of the audio installation Women’s Weeds by Dr. Romany Reagan, you are invited to join us for a talk exploring the role of women in healing during the late mediaeval and early modern eras (15th to 17th centuries).

Herbal Remedies, Folk Medicine & Kitchen Physick: The Secrets of Mediaeval Women Healers will uncover how women shared healing practices in a sisterhood of secret knowledge that was handed down through generations.

This event marks the closure of Women’s Weeds. You can listen now to the audio installation in our gardens, or on Bloomberg Connects.

Folklore, Halloween, Home protection folklore, London, Museum of the Home, Talk, witches

Museum Late 29/10/2021 at the Museum of the Home in London — ‘NightIn: Magical Home Protection’

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We’re holding our first-ever #museumlate at @MuseumoftheHome! 🌙 For #Halloween 🎃🎃🎃 we’re hosting an evening of #witchbottle making workshop by @rebeccambeattie, talks on #witchcraft (by Christina, founder of @treadwells) & #Folklore (by me!), cheese toasties + vegan deli trucks, bespoke #HedgeWitch herbaceous cocktail bar 🍸spooky tunes DJ set by @andyravensable 🦇🦇🦇 & live music by ‘broken folk’ band @lunatraktors 🍂🕸

☠️✨ Come play with us!!! ✨☠️

https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/whats-on/events/night-in-magical-home-protection/

This event marks the beginning of our Winter Festival as we all prepare our homes for the coming winter. As well as experiencing our galleries after hours, this Night In has a workshop, talks and music for all things magical.

  • Visit our home protections charms workshop with Dr Rebecca Beattie
  • Attend talks on witchcraft and folklore with Dr Christina Oakley Harrington and Dr Romany Reagan
  • Try our bespoke ‘hedge witch’ cocktail bar
  • Enjoy delicious food with cheese toasties from Grate & Grill and vegan/gluten free salads and fritters from Dorothy’s Deli 
  • Dance to a DJ set by DJ AndyRavenSable and a live musical performance by ‘broken folk’ band the Lunatraktors
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Cemeteries, Talk

Virtual Talk: Hail the Highgate Vampire! Goth kids, Cemeteries & the Search for the Secular Sublime’

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I’ll be giving a virtual talk Sun 27 Sept 10pm BST for the #RuralGothic conference. There will be lots of amazing speakers over the course of two days! All for a tenner!

My talk closes out the conference:
‘Hail the Highgate Vampire! Goth kids, cemeteries, and the search for the secular sublime’
☠️⚰️🧛🏻‍♂️🕯
Through repetition and shared community lineage rituals become codified in society. The lines between acceptable and unacceptable ritual tend to follow the law of established shared-heritage practices going unquestioned, winning validity over recently invented rites. From media-hungry occultists battling it out with mock satanists in Highgate Cemetery in the 1970s to 21st-century wiccan white witches in Abney Park cemetery today, older sites of ritual continue to draw new practices. Our Victorian garden cemeteries offer the pull of an historical site with the aesthetics to match. From their crumbling chapels to their Egyptian follies, new rites fit into the old ways. This talk will take you on a journey through alternative meanings of space as practitioners search for the secular sublime.