Image and Introduction
Sophia Centre Tutor
Institute of Education and Humanities
Tel: (020) 7603-7835
Email: p.curry@uwtsd.ac.uk
Role in the University
Supervising PhD students.
Background
I hold a BA (University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978, in Psychology, with highest honours), MSc (L.S.E., 1980, in Logic and Scientific Method), and PhD (University College London, 1987, in the History and Philosophy of Science).
From September 2006 until September 2009 I was a Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I taught in the MA programme on the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. From 2002–2006 I was a Lecturer at the Sophia Centre, Bath Spa University, where I co-taught the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology. In 2009 I returned to the Sophia Centre after it had transferred to the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
I am the Editor of the online journal, , launched in Spring 2017.
In addition to many papers, articles and reviews, I am presently writing a book on enchantment. More information and most of my papers can be found on
I have acted as external examiner to a number of PhD theses and am continuing to supervise PhD students.
Academic Interests
Formerly I taught modules in the MA Cultural Astronomy and Astrology (Science and Scepticism, History of Astrology, Introduction to Cultural Astronomy and Astrology, and Research Methods: Ethnography and Fieldwork). I am currently supervising PhDs: Garry Phillipson, ‘Astrology and Truth’; Anthony Thorley, ‘The Landscape Zodiac Phenomenon’.
Research Interests
Astrology (history and philosophy of), divination, Weber, Tolkien studies and in certain respects philosophy, anthropology and religious studies.
Expertise
I have reviewed books for History Today, New Statesman and Society, The Guardian, The Independent and the Times Literary Supplement, appeared on two television programmes and taken part in two programmes on BBC Radio Four. I appear in interviews of two of the three extended New Line DVDs of The Lord of the Rings.
Publications
- Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Oxford: Polity Press & Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989),
- A Confusion of Prophets (Collins and Brown, 1992) and, with Roy Willis, Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon (Oxford: Berg, 2004).
- Astrology and the Academy, with Nicholas Campion and Michael York (eds) (Bristol: Cinnabar Books, 2004),
- Sky and Psyche: The Relationship between Cosmos and Consciousness, ed. with Nicholas Campion (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2006).
- Seeing with Different Eyes: Essays on Astrology and Divination, with Angela Voss (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008).
- Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium, editor (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2010).
- Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
- Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, rev. ed (Polity Press, 2011)
- Deep Roots in a Time of Frost: Essays on Tolkien (Zurich: Walking Tree Books, 2014).