John-Henry Carter is the most successful captain of Oxford rugby team ever, the only captain to lead the team to three successive victories in the Varsity match. The former flanker attributes that success not to his speed or his 6ft … Continue reading
We recently asked three of our early-career scholars – Sarah Crook, Richard Firth-Godbehere, and Chris Millard – to tell us what they thought about the history of emotions and how it connected with their research. Here’s what they told us … Continue reading
Professor Nancy Sherman has worked with the US military for over 20 years, and has written several books on military ethics, including Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind; and The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds and … Continue reading
Norman E. Rosenthal is clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is best known for having discovered Seasonal Affective Disorder and how to treat it with light therapy. He recently visited the Centre for the History … Continue reading
Is it taboo for academics to talk about their spiritual experiences? What can the humanities bring to the study of such experiences? Can we steer between the Scylla of religious dogmatism and the Charybidis of materialist reductionism when interpreting such experiences? I … Continue reading
<When Dr Robin Carhart-Harris finished his masters in psychoanalysis in 2005, he decided he wanted to do a brain- imaging study of LSD to see if he could locate the ego and the unconscious. That might have seemed an impossible … Continue reading
Shakespeare’s first tragedy, revived by Michael Fentiman for the RSC this summer, is a story of blood, tears, rape, and entrails. From the opening scenes, in which Titus orders the ritual disembowelling of the Goth Queen Tamora’s son, the violence … Continue reading
This year, I’ve started researching ecstatic experience, from a personal and an academic perspective. One of the highlights of my research has been encountering the work of Ann Taves, a religious studies academic at the University of California, Santa Barbara, … Continue reading
Bernd Bösel is a philosopher and scholar with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, who has explored the idea of enthusiasm in the history of ideas, in his book Philosophie und Enthusiasmus. I met Bernd for an enthusiastic caffeine-fueled conversation to … Continue reading
I’m sitting in the West London studio of Brian Eno, one of the all-time great pioneers of sound recording, and my dictaphone has broken. Right at the beginning of our interview. ‘It’s…er…saying it’s full’, I say. ‘How do I delete … Continue reading