The Between Science and Magic symposium is jointly organised by the TiTaRa project – whose acronym comes from the Finnish “Tieteen ja taikuuden rajamailla”, translating to “Between Science and Magic” – and the Finnish network of magic studies.
Symposium committee: Sara Norja (University of Turku), Karolina Kouvola (University of Oulu), Ida Meerto (University of Turku), Aleksi Moine (University of Helsinki).
TiTaRa
TiTaRa, based at the University of Turku and funded by the Kone Foundation (2023-25), explores questions of identity through historical linguistics and book history: How did people in medieval and early modern England (c. 8th to 17th centuries) write about those who operated between the boundaries of science and magic (alchemists, astrologers, and witches)? What does this tell us about their societal roles as early scientists, dangerous sorcerers, or helpful healers?
We approach varied materials such as manuscripts, early printed books, scholarly editions, corpora, historical linguistic dictionaries, and catalogues from a philological perspective, combining historical discourse studies, manuscript studies / book history, genre studies, and lexicology.
Our project team consists of Ida Meerto (MA), Sara Norja (PhD, author), Kristel Nyberg (MTh, author), and Mari-Liisa Varila (PhD, principal investigator). Public outreach is important to TiTaRa, and one of our project outputs will be a tabletop roleplaying game enabling players to familiarise themselves with the project’s themes in an easily accessible manner requiring no advance knowledge.
You can find TiTaRa on Instagram and Bluesky.
Finnish network of magic studies
The multidisciplinary Finnish network of magic studies was born from a symposium for researchers of magic and witchcraft, organised in October 2021. The network aims to foster collaboration between Finnish researchers of magic and connected topics. The 2021 symposium acted as inspiration for this one. The network’s webpage can be found here (in Finnish).