Miss Rebecca Willis

Rebecca Willis is a PhD candidate and recipient of the Vice-Chancellors RTP Scholarship whose research explores the perceptions of individuals and communities of the past through the lens of Cultural History. Her Research seeks the utilize under-researched aspects of everyday life that deeply impacted the shared existence of past cultures across social and economic boundaries such as the natural environment in which they lived and travelled. Rebecca's key interest focuses on how our ancestors perceived and interacted with the 'inexplicable unknowns' shared across the human experience such as death, illness and fear. Such wide-ranging interests have led naturally to a multi-disciplinary approach that spans the interrelated topics of Human/Animal Studies, Studies of Folklore and Mythology, Death and the Study of Emotion, Study of Magic, the History of Early Science, and Studies of Religion. 

Rebecca's Doctoral research encompasses these broad concepts by examining the realities of the practice of magic in the Ancient Mediterranean Region. Specifically, the use of humans and their bodily components as ingredients through which the practitioners demonstrated their scientific and spiritual conceptualization of the human body and their perceived ability to manipulate the natural world around them. With such practices often existing on the boarder of religious and scientific understanding, they also provide a unique insight into these parallel cultural traditions. Later aspects of Rebecca's research will also delve into the field of Classical Reception, as she traces the influence of these practices into Medieval and Early-Modern European thought, the descendants of which we still see today.