Ceri Houlbrook

I'm currently working as a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme-funded 'Inner Lives: Emotion, Identity, and the Supernatural, 1300-1900' project with Prof. Owen Davies at the University of Hertfordshire. For this I'm looking at the materiality of magic and fear of the supernatural in post-medieval Britain. I've set up the 'Concealed Revealed Project' (https://theconcealedrevealed.wordpress.com), which aims to catalogue concealed objects and domestic apotropaic devices across Britain, as well as to interview finders of these objects in order to understand how their biographies continue once the concealed is revealed.

I obtained my PhD in Archaeology from the University of Manchester, UK, in 2014. My thesis, entitled 'Coining the Coin-Tree', used archaeological and anthropological methodologies in order to contextualise the contemporary British folkloric custom of coin-trees.

My primary interests are the archaeology of contemporary folklore, ritual, and depositional practices. I am particularly interested in exploring how folkloric customs become acclimatised to different times and places, and the processes which lead to their survivals, revivals, and recontextualisations.