Speaker Biographies

The Buried Moon: a spiritual fairy tale of our prehistoric ancestors?

Biography:
Dan Broadbent is an archaologist and storyteller, based in South West England. As Historic Heritage Officer for the Quantock Hills National Landscape, he develops community projects which investigate and celebrate the rich heritage of England’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. He is also the founder of Blabbermouth Community Storytelling, a project dedicated to exploring the potential of traditional oral storytelling in building resilient communities, providing opportunities for reconnecting with nature, improving personal well-being, and celebrating cultural diversity. He holds a BSc. in Archaeology from University of Plymouth, and an M.A. in Ecology & Spirituality from the University of Wales Trinity St David.

Name: Nick Campion

The Kumbh Mela: A Meeting of Minds, Rivers and Planets

Biography:
Nicholas Campion is Programme Director of the online MA programme in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, the only academic course in the world to consider humanity’s relationship with the sky. He is also Associate Professor in Cosmology and Culture, Principal Lecturer in the Institute of Education and Humanities and Director of the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture. His books include the two-volume History of Western Astrology (London: Bloomsbury 2008/9) and Astrology and Cosmology in the World’s Religions (New York: New York University Press, 2012). He is the editor of Culture and Cosmos, the journal on the history of cultural astronomy and astrology. In 2022 the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC) awarded him the Carlos Jaschek award in honour of his significant contribution to the study of astronomy and culture.

Name: Krystyna Cap

‘Arabic Astrology’ in Eleventh-Century Winchester? A Tale of Two Manuscripts

Biography:
Krystyna holds an MA in History from Johns Hopkins University and has recently completed all requirements for her MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astronomy (anticipated graduation: July 2025). Her MA dissertation, ‘“Arabic Astrology” in Early Medieval England? A Re-Examination of Prognostics and Planetary Knowledge in Three Winchester Manuscripts, c. 1023-1060’, queried whether the prognostic and astronomical material contained in a psalter, private prayerbook and computus anthology supported an earlier dating for the revival of horoscopic astrology. Her current research interests include astrology, cosmology and divination in early Medieval England.

Name: Jo Edge

'Afflicted in her mind more than her soul': mental disturbance and the distinction between mind and soul in the casebooks of Richard Napier (1558–1634)

Biography:
Jo Edge is a cultural historian of medicine and the occult in late medieval and early modern Europe. She did her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the university of London, and was awarded her PhD on onomantic divination, supervised by Peregrine Horden, from Royal Holloway in 2015. A book based on this thesis was published by York Medieval Press in 2024. Since finishing her PhD she has worked in a variety of research, library and teaching roles at the universities of Cambridge, Manchester, Edinburgh and Portsmouth. She was recently Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths.

Name: Miłosława Krogulska

Lost in Translation: Saggitarius and oclopeta. The challenges faced during the translation of ancient astrological texts into contemporary languages, with the example of Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius.

Biography:
Miłosława Krogulska is a Polish astrology teacher with 30 years of experience. Since 2002 she has been a member of the British Astrological Association. Krogulska is a graduate in Classical Philology at the Cardinal Wyszynski University in Warsaw and she is currently studying for an MA in Classical Philology at the University of Warsaw. She obtained her MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology in 2024, under the supervision of Dr Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum.

Name: Roderick Main

Biography:
Roderick Main, PhD, works at the University of Essex, UK, where he is a professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and Director of the Centre for Myth Studies. His books include Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (1997, edited), The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture (2004), Revelations of chance: Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience (2007), Myth, Literature, and the Unconscious (2013, co-edited) Holism: Possibilities and Problems (2020, co-edited), Jung, Deleuze, and the Problematic Whole (2021, co-edited), and, most recently, Breaking the Spell of Disenchantment: Mystery, Meaning, and Metaphysics in the Work of C. G. Jung (2022).

Name: AJ Nicol

Countercultural Re-imaginings: The Age of Aquarius on TikTok

Biography:
AJ Nicol is a recent MACAA graduate, specialising in the intersection of astrology and social media, with a background in cultural studies from a Media and Communications B.A from Goldsmiths, University of London. Their M.A. dissertation was shortlisted for the 2025 Sophia Centre Dissertation Prize and focuses on the contemporary iterations of the cultural phenomena of the Age of Aquarius. In addition, the research investigated the threads of far-right conspiracy theories found within discourse about the Age of Aquarius on TikTok, adding to the emerging, yet growing literature on Conspirituality.

Name: Fabio Silva

Geometrical abstractions and the move to a post-geometric skyscape archaeology

Biography:
Fabio Silva is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeological Modelling at Bournemouth University and co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Skyscape Archaeology. His primary research interest is how societies have perceived and conceived their environment and used that to time and adjust social, productive and magico-religious behaviours. This steered him to focus research along two distinct yet complementary strands: archaeological modelling and skyscape archaeology. With respect to the latter, he is not so interested in identifying and collecting celestial alignments but in understanding how they can help us peek into the ontologies of past societies, i.e. into how they conceived the world and their place in it. This takes careful, robust and reflexive approaches to the archaeological record – both qualitative and quantitative – which he is keen to not only explore but also develop. This has taken him to study primarily prehistoric structures in Iberia and the United Kingdom.

Name: Anna Simms

‘This moost necessarye and godlye pronostication’: how astrology was made acceptable, accessible, and necessary by the early English print trade (1485-1558)

Biography:
I am a third year, part-time, DPhil student of early modern history at Lincoln College, Oxford. I graduated from the University of Oxford in 2022 with an MSt. in Historical Studies and my thesis, ‘The Signes of the Tymes: Astrological Guidance in Marian Print Culture, 1553-1558’, considered the role of astrology in print during the five-year reign of Mary I, with a particular focus on the interplay between religion, agriculture, and medicine, with astrology at that time.

I also hold a BSc. in Psychology (2007) and a PGCE in education (2008) whereby I have worked in various teaching roles as a primary, secondary, and special educational needs teacher, and tutor, and continue to be interested and active in education, particularly in the teaching of history. In 2024 I created Tudor Tales, an online platform dedicated to Tudor history education.

Name: Lisa Stockley

Spirit and soul in contemporary psychological astrology; the experience of astrology students

Biography:
Lisa Stockley has a first degree in Modern Languages and an MA in Information Management, and is a student on the MA Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. She is interested in the role of astrology in contemporary culture and the intersection of astrology and spirituality.