WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE

Its principal purpose is to help you find out what I have written and, in some cases, to make it available to you here. Some of it is academic, some of it as popular as I can manage, and some hovers between the two.

In this context my biography is not important. For anyone curious, however, here is the basic plot so far. I was born 24 March 1951 in Winnipeg Canada but have now lived in London for more than thirty years. I am divorced with an adult son and step-son and a daughter aged eighteen. I am a lay Buddhist (Soto Zen) whose teacher was Kobun Chino Otogawa, Roshi. My activities include travel, music, photography and poetry, and I also hold a black belt (1st Dan) in karate-kickboxing, as taught by Sensei Dwyer Evelyn.

Academic Stuff

I hold a B.A. (University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978, in Psychology, with highest honours), M.Sc. (L.S.E., 1980, in Logic and Scientific Method), and Ph.D. (University College London, 1987, in the History and Philosophy of Science).

Since September 2006 I have been a Lecturer (0.5) in Religious Studies at the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I teach in the MA programme on the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. From 2002-06 I was a Lecturer (0.5) at the Sophia Centre, Bath Spa University College, where I co-taught the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astronomy.  I am also an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wales, Lampeter, during 2008-2010.

I have reviewed books for History Today, New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and (most often) the Times Literary Supplement; appeared on two television programmes; and taken part in two programmes on BBC Radio Four. I also appear in interviews of two of the three extended New Line DVD’s on The Lord of the Rings.

My ongoing project (when I get time) concerns enchantment as a common but little-mentioned human experience – one which touches on and connects a wide range of strange bedfellows: nature, erotic communion, art, divination and spirituality. It is influenced by the work of Max Weber and succeeding critical theorists, as well as other writers such as as J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, David Abram, Sean Kane, Val Plumwood, Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. I am also very interested in related issues such as the nature of truth, metaphor, embodied phenomenology, pluralism and post-secularism.