History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Author Archive | Karl Bell

munch plus cities

Building Supernatural Cities

In this post, Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history, talks about his new book Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality, bringing together scholars from across the globe working on the relationship between supernatural beliefs and urban cultures.  He describes what the book is about, and what he learned from the process of international academic collaboration. In my most recent book I brought together and led an international group of scholars in an exploration of magic, monsters, ghosts and storytelling in urban cultures around the world.  Examining these ideas from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality (Boydell and Brewer, 2019) challenges […]

Continue Reading 0
DarkFest2018-logo-colour-on-white

A Festival of Dark Delights: Portsmouth DarkFest 2018

Dr Karl Bell, Reader in Cultural and Social History, discusses the launch of this year’s Portsmouth DarkFest. Karl researches ‘everything spooky’, and his second book was on the Victorian legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. He’s now working on a book on proto-science fiction ideas in British culture between c.1750-1900. This weekend sees the return of Portsmouth DarkFest, an annual creative and cultural festival that explores the supernatural, the spooky and urban noir. Now in its third year, the festival originally grew from my historical research into nineteenth-century ghost stories in Portsmouth. I was particularly interested in the power of folkloric stories and the way haunted locations can change our understanding of both […]

Continue Reading 1
Darkfest

Portsmouth Darkfest returns! October 26th – November 30th 2017

Dr Karl Bell, Reader in Cultural and Social History at Portsmouth, has organised another series of events this autumn as part of Portsmouth Darkfest, a creative and cultural festival that explores all things dark, supernatural and sinister. For details of the wide range of exciting events taking place, click here. Karl’s research interests cover nineteenth-century British society’s continued fascination with supernatural beliefs, magic and folklore, and feeds into his final year Special Subject, Magic and Modernity: Witchcraft and the Occult, c. 1800-1920s.

Continue Reading 0
seance

Lost Voices: Spiritualism on the Home Front, 1914-1919.

Dr Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history at Portsmouth, has written the following blog based on his AHRC-funded ‘Everyday Lives of the First World War’ research project that examined the role of Spiritualism in Britain during the First World War. Karl’s research interests cover various aspects of ‘the fantastical imagination’, including magical beliefs and practices, witchcraft, the supernatural, superstition, prophecy, millenarianism, legends, myths, urban folklore and (proto-) science-fiction tropes from 1700 onwards. To read Karl’s blog, please click the following link: https://everydaylivesinwar.herts.ac.uk/?p=3385  

Continue Reading 0
Spring Heeled Jack Illustration

Portsmouth Darkfest

Dr Karl Bell, Senior Lecturer in History, reports on the Portsmouth DarkFest held in October-November 2016.  Karl’s research area is ‘everything spooky’; his second book was on the Victorian legend of Spring-Heeled Jack and he’s now working on a book on proto-science fiction ideas in British culture between c.1750-1900. Long after the Halloween pumpkins had been extinguished, something of the thrills and celebration of that spooky season lingered on in Portsmouth last autumn. Beginning on 27th October with a talk by thriller writer and ex-SAS soldier Andy McNab, Portsmouth DarkFest, a new creative and cultural festival exploring all things dark, supernatural and sinister, ran throughout November. Led by Karl Bell […]

Continue Reading 0