Conference: Cosmologies

The Sophia Centre at the University of Wales, Lampeter, has announced its annual conference, this time of the theme of Cosmologies. The event will take place on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 June 2009 at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute (UK). Speakers will include (subject to alteration):

- Ronald Hutton (University of Bristol): 'The Wheel of the Year: The Major Traditional Festivals of Britain',
- Peter Forshaw (University of Cambridge): 'Astronomia Inferior et Superior: Some Medieval and Renaissance Instances of the Conjunction of Alchemy and Astrology',
- Martin Gansten (Lund University): 'Reshaping karma: Indic metaphysical paradigms in traditional and modern astrology',
- Mark Williams (University of Cambridge): 'Druidic Cloud-Divination in Medieval Irish Literature',
- Jane Ridder-Patrick (University of Edinburgh): 'Astrology in Early Modern Scottish Universities, ca. 1560-1700',
- Elizabeth Reichell (University of Wales, Lampeter): 'The Landscape in the Cosmoscape: cosmology, ethnoastronomy, and socio-environmental sustainability among the Tanimuka and Yukuna, Northwest Amazon',
- Helen Jacobus (University of Manchester): 'Calendars and Divination in the Dead Sea Scrolls: The Case of 4Q318 Zodiac Calendar and Brontologion',
- Lionel Sims (University of East London), TBA,
- Pauline Bambrey (University of Wales, Lampeter): 'An Ethnographic Study of Modern Calendar Festivals',
- Glenford Bishop (University of Wales, Lampeter): 'Decoding the Intertextual Literary 'Strata' of the Mummers' Play: Some Unexpected Astronomical Themes and a Pagan Fingerprint - Continuity or Reconstruction?',
- Martin Wells (University of Wales, Lampeter): 'Early Christian Responses to the Star of Bethlehem, Astrology and Astral Fate',
- Frances Clynes (University of Wales, Lampeter): 'Cyberspace and the Sacred Sky'.

See the conference website for updated information.