Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

Maggie Webster is my fantastic guest this week, five years to the day since I broadcast my first Nostalgia Interviews podcast episode. Maggie teaches Religious Education at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, and we learn that she did a PhD in Lampeter which explored how people become witches on social media. Maggie discusses her fieldwork in which she interviewed 13 witches who ranged in age from 20 to 70, and how among other things they fought back against stereotypes. We talk about how there was a coming out of the broom cupboard in the 1990s, through magazine articles, films and TV series but how even today it is very difficult to find in-person covens. We find out how Maggie was destined to do this research on contemporary witchcraft, we learn about her research drivers and how it was as much a hobby as work as she would read all fiction and watch films about witches in her downtime. We talk about Witch Lit and The Witches of Eastwick and how films today are less heteronormative than they were a few