Jenny Blain
BSc (hons); MA; PhD
Current post: Senior Lecturer in Sociology, School of Social Science and Law, Sheffield Hallam University (2000-pres.).
Research interests include: Paganisms; landscape and spirituality; heritage policy and sacred sites; situated identities and knowledges; gender and sexualities; alternative and marginalised groups, politics and policies; social theory; discourse and narrative analysis; ethnographic research methods and epistemologies.
External research funding: Sacred Sites, contested Rights/Rites: Heritage discourse, Pagan resistance. ESRC RES-000-22-0074 (2002-03)
Discourse, Spirituality and Identity: the construction of identity in members of alternative religious groups. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (1996-2000).
PhD research (1986-91) was enabled by I.W. Killam fellowship and SSHRC scholarship.
Selected recent publications - books
- 2002. Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism London: Routledge
- 2004. Researching Paganisms. Walnut Creek: Altamira. Blain, J, D. Ezzy, G. Harvey (eds.)
Articles and book chapters
Blain, J. 2005 'Now many of those things are shown to me which I was denied before': Seidr, shamanism, and journeying, past and present. Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses
- 2002 Magic, healing, or death? Issues of Seidr, 'balance', and morality in past and present. In New Approaches to Medical Archaeology and Anthropology, G. Carr and P. Baker (eds.) Oxbow Books
- 2002 Paganisms. In G. Taylor and S. Spencer, Perspectives on Social Identity. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University Press, and 2004 from Routledge
- 2001 Shamans, Stones, Authenticity and Appropriation: Contestations of Invention and Meaning. In R.J. Wallis and K. Lymer (eds.) New Approaches to the Archaeology of Art, Religion and Folklore: A Permeability of Boundaries? Oxford: BAR.
- 2000. Speaking shamanistically: seidr, academia and rationality. DISKUS. Online at
http://www.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus/#6
- 2000. Contested Meanings: Earth-religion Practitioners and the Everyday. The Pomegranate, 12
- 1999. Seidr as Shamanistic Practice: Reconstituting a Tradition of Ambiguity. Shaman 7.2: 99-121.
Co-authored articles and chapters
For recent articles and chapters from the project see PROJECT EVENTS.
Blain, J and R J Wallis, 2000. The 'ergi' seidman: Contestations of gender, shamanism and sexuality in northern religion past and present. Journal of Contemporary Religion. 15.3: 395-411.
- Ritual reflections, practitioner meanings: 'performance' disputed. Forthcoming in Journal of Ritual Studies
Letcher, A., J. Blain and R.J. Wallis. 2005 in press.. Re-Viewing the Past: Discourse and Power in Images of Prehistory. In M. Robinson and D. Picard (eds.)Tourism and Photography
Wallis, R.J. and J. Blain 2003. Sites, sacredness, and stories: Interactions of archaeology and contemporary Paganism. Folklore 114:307-321
Encyclopaedia articles.
Seidr (northern Shamanistic Practice) in The Encyclopaedia of Modern Witchcraft and neo-Paganism Ed. Shelley T. Rabinovitch and James R. Lewis, 2002 Citadel Press.
Entries on Heathenry, and Seidr, in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, eds. B Taylor and J Kaplan. 2005 from Cassell/Continuum. Entry on Sacred Sites co-authored with R.J. Wallis
Textbook
Think Twice! Sociology looks at Current Issues Lorne Tepperman and Jenny Blain. Simon and Schuster/Prentice Hall (2005, 1998).
For Reports and discussion documents see Sacred Sites Project site.
Jenny Blain is a review editor of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies and the Journal for the Academic Study of Magic.
She is an affiliate of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change.
Further information about the staff interests of the Sociology and Social Policy group at Sheffield Hallam will shortly be forthcoming from the Sheffield Hallam University website.