The symposium’s keynote speakers are Egil Asprem and Carla Suhr.
Professor Egil Asprem (University of Stockholm)
Professor of the history of religions Egil Asprem has specialised in alternative spiritualities, the history of magic and the relations between esotericism and science. He is the co-editor of New Approaches to the Study of Esotericism (2021) and author of Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern Occulture (2013). Asprem is a board member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) and presently holds the roles of treasurer and membership secretary within the society. Professor Asprem’s ongoing research focuses on the Roma in the European study of magic within the field of critical Romani studies. See https://www.su.se/english/profiles/easpr-1.285371.
Title of Docent, University Lecturer Carla Suhr (University of Helsinki)
Dr Suhr’s research focuses on historical (corpus) pragmatics, genre studies, and discourse analysis. She has a strong interest in combining book history with her research into historical English texts. Her PhD (2011) dealt with the development of the genre of witchcraft pamphlets, and currently she works with early modern news pamphlets more generally and medical texts from the period 1500 to 1800. Since 2000, she has been a member of the Scientific Thought-Styles project – a part of the VARIENG research group – which has compiled a large corpus of historical medical writing, the Corpus of Early English Medical Writing (CEEMW). See https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/carla-suhr.