Elizabeth Bathory
“They called me the hand of the Devil. Scourge. Straight out of the thin fold that keeps Hell and Earth apart. Part woman, part monster. They told stories of my depravity. How I lured young women to me. In my time they stripped me of my lands, my influence, my power. In your time they brought out books and moving images about me describing the horrors I inflicted on these innocents, these unprotected girls. Elizabeth Bathory: torturer. Killer. Psychopath. The Blood Countess. But this isn’t their story. It’s mine.” (from: The Blood Countess. p. xii)
This talk looks the infamous figure of the Countess Elizabeth Bathory – said to be Europe’s first female serial killer. Said to have tortured and murdered 650 young women for her own dark pleasure. Said to have inspired myths and stories like Snow White and countless other monstrous women.
But did she do it? How do you exorcise the ghost of a whole forgotten history and get it to speak in the present day? Part true-crime investigation, part esoteric exorcism of a violence that haunts the history books, the author of The Blood Countess will discuss how she wrote the novel using a freaky combination of quantum ontologies and the scholarly practice of fictioning to perform a literary exorcism.
Based on 100s of hours of original research and tapping into scholarly practices of new materialism this novel takes an uncompromising look at what history is and what it does to women.
Praise for the book:
Imagine one of Virginia Woolf’s speculative biographies told through quantum physics. Truly a novel for our time whose beautiful narration continues to. Haunt my thoughts like the Countess herself. Prof Thomas Nail (Philosophy, University of Denver)
Quantum physics made very sexy. Prof Johnny Golding (Fine Art & Philosophy, Royal College of Art)
There’s plenty to think about here, especially where the compelling historical events get reflected in the modern day, through a mysterious quantum entanglement. This novel is like a cross between Hilary Mantel’s retelling of court history in Wolf Hall, the bibliographic thrills in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose, and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. Prof Alan Blackwell (Computer Science, University of Cambridge)
Congratulations doesn’t seem plaudit enough for this book. Such an original idea. Prof Sir Harry Bhadeshia (Metallurgy, Tata Steel/ Cambridge University)
Speaker Bio:
Dr Annouchka Bayley is an Associate Professor of Arts at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Darwin College. She is Chair of the Cambridge Posthuman Network, Co-Chair of the Cambridge CRASSH lab LEAPLab, and former designer and director of the Cambridge Arts, Creativity & Education MPhil programme (2021-2024).
She is one-quarter of the live-coding, doom-metal band Chainsaw Trousers. She has previously worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and held lectureships at the Royal College of Art and Kings College London. She has published extensively on new materialisms and posthumanisms for art practice. Her 2026 articles include Mycelial Madness with the Royal Society, the Reverse Engineering of an Exorcism with Performance Research, and a new book Fieldnotes from the Edges of Arts with Routledge.
UK Press for the novel:
Intl Press: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/oct/30/accounts-hungarian-blood-countess-remain-shrouded-/
(other include Seattle Times, CBS news) Radio: abc Australia
Curated & Hosted By:
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
