Afterlife Research Centre

The Afterlife Research Centre is an academic forum for research into the afterlife, mediumship, paranormal and religious experience.

Among the people involved in this site are:

• Fiona Bowie, who is an Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology (study of humankind) at the University of Bristol and member of Wolfson College, Oxford. Her research interests include ethnographic approaches (descriptions of customs of people and their cultures) in particular in the study of religious experience and African religions. Fiona is widely-written and her book Tales from the Afterlife is probably the best known of her relevant publications
• Jack Hunter, who is also a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Bristol, studying Spiritualist groups in the city. His undergraduate dissertation, also undertaken at Bristol, concerned the practice of contemporary trance and physical mediumship at the Bristol Spirit Lodge.

  Jack produces a regular on-line newsletter exploring anthropological and other academic approaches to the paranormal. According to the website: “the journal aims to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue on issues of the paranormal, so as to move beyond the sceptic vs. advocate impasse which has settled over the current debate, and to open new avenues for enquiry and understanding”- which seems very admirable to me
  The journal can be downloaded free of charge at: www.paranthropology.co.uk

  While my own research was not strictly anthropologically based (try saying that after a glass of champagne), I believe that the paranormal is best served with research from as many different perspectives as possible, and it would seem that Fiona and her team at the University of Bristol are making significant contributions to our understanding of parapsychology.
  Coming under the anthropology/ethnography banner, and with informal links to the Afterlife Reseach Centre, are a number of other paranormal researchers, one of whom caught my eye.

  iarla – an independent site looking at paranormal research, history, evidence, and evps

• Rosemarie Cornacchione is an independent paranormal researcher (with a fabulous looking site) called iarla Rosemarie is looking at paranormal investigations from an historical perspective, with the aim of corroborating the evidence for paranormal phenomena. She is particularly interested in haunted locations!