Mediomania: Pathologizing Mediumship in the Victorian Era
The spiritualist movement of the 19th century is often remembered as a stumbling new religion, a historic curiosity, a feminist footnote, or simply a pseudoscientific trend in an age of spiritual credulity and industrial development. However, within this diverse and fascinating new field, science frequently attempted to assess spiritual claims of mediumship as a measurable and explainable phenomena.
Using physiological and medical arguments, scientists utilised new knowledge on the human nervous system – alongside more cultural beliefs surrounding mental weaknesses between the genders – to align spiritualism with their cultural norms and accepted medical developments. This curious talk presents these lesser-known cultural and scientific beliefs, explaining the prominent arguments and scientific theories of the time, and what their work really said about the spiritualist movement, women’s changing role in society, and our own understanding of consciousness.
BIO: Dr Kate Cherrell is a writer, speaker and broadcaster specialising in Victorian Spiritualism and paranormal history. She is the author of Begotten (2025), Buried England (2026) and The Sensuality of Séance (TBC), and writes commercially about paranormal history for various media outlets. As a paranormal historian, she has co-hosted the television programmes Haunted Homecoming and Unexplained: Caught on Camera and has provided historical expertise for The Yorkshire Exorcist, Paranormal, and Weird Britain. She is co-founder of Not of this World festival, director of The Bats’ Ball and co-founder of the Lincolnshire Folklore Society. She lives for good wine, ghosts, and graves
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
This is a 5 part series of lectures
