Dr Jack Hunter – Deep Weird: High Strangeness, Boggle Thresholds and Damned Data in Academic Research on Extraordinary Experience
What is your boggle threshold?
This webinar is about the stranger reaches of extraordinary experience research, and examines why some of the most unusual experiential reports come to be neglected in the scholarly discourse, even within this relatively fringe field of inquiry. Some of the reasons are methodological in nature, while others are rooted in deeper cultural and personal attitudes to anomalous data. The academic aversion to the most unusual forms of extraordinary experience has resulted in a gulf between the kinds of experiences discussed in the scholarly literature – which often fall into distinctive types and categories (OBE, NDE, voice hearing, encounters with light, religious experience, and so on) – and the writings of popular paranormal researchers, who have more frequently been able to discuss a broader range of experiential accounts (from UFO encounters to Bigfoot and fairy sightings).
Notwithstanding this divide, however, there are significant themes that run through the established academic literature on religious and extraordinary experience and the canon of popular paranormal research, some of which we will explore. These similarities suggest that even the most unusual experiences, which are often ignored by academics, contain elements that connect them to other forms of extraordinary experience that are more broadly accepted.
This webinar concludes by suggesting that a sense of high strangeness might well be a core underlying feature of extraordinary experience more generally, and that instead of being neglected the deep weird should be granted greater and renewed scholarly attention.
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About the speaker:
Jack Hunter, PhD, is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. He is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and a tutor at the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He teaches on the MA in Ecology and Spirituality and the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology. He is also a tutor for the Alef Trust on their MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, where he teaches on the Approaches to Consciousness module. He is the author of Manifesting Spirits (2020), Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020) and Ecology and Spirituality (2023), editor of Deep Weird (2023), Greening the Paranormal (2019) and Damned Facts (2016), and co-editor of Talking With the Spirits (2014), Mattering the Invisible (2021), Folklore, People and Place (2023) and Sacred Geography: Conversations with Place (2024). He lives in the hills of Mid-Wales with his family.
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Speaker
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Jack HunterAnthropologist, Teacher, Honorary Research FellowJack Hunter, PhD, is an anthropologist exploring the borderlands of consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. He is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and a tutor at the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He teaches on the MA in Ecology and Spirituality and the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology. He is also a tutor for the Alef Trust on their MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology, where he teaches on the Approaches to Consciousness module. He is the author of Manifesting Spirits (2020), Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020) and Ecology and Spirituality (2023), editor of Deep Weird (2023), Greening the Paranormal (2019) and Damned Facts (2016), and co-editor of Talking With the Spirits (2014), Mattering the Invisible (2021), Folklore, People and Place (2023) and Sacred Geography: Conversations with Place (2024). He lives in the hills of Mid-Wales with his family.
Jack Hunter, PhD, es un antropólogo que explora las fronteras de la conciencia, la religión, la ecología y lo paranormal. Es Investigador Honorario en el Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre de la Universidad de Gales Trinity Saint David, y tutor en el Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture en la misma universidad. Enseña en el máster en Ecología y Espiritualidad y en el máster en Astronomía Cultural y Astrología. También es tutor en Alef Trust para el máster en Conciencia, Espiritualidad y Psicología Transpersonal, donde imparte el módulo Enfoques de la Conciencia. Es autor de Manifesting Spirits (2020), Spirits, Gods and Magic (2020) y Ecology and Spirituality (2023), editor de Deep Weird (2023), Greening the Paranormal (2019) y Damned Facts (2016), y coeditor de Talking With the Spirits (2014), Mattering the Invisible (2021), Folklore, People and Place (2023) y Sacred Geography: Conversations with Place (2024). Vive en las colinas del centro de Gales con su familia.
