Megan Rose Griffiths, MA
Meet the Contributor
Area(s) of Atlantic Study: New England (U.S), Great Britain, Caribbean
Academic Background
Megan is a fifth-year PhD candidate at Queen’s University, researching possession and confession in early modern witchcraft events. She explores the sensuous and imaginative worlds – seen and unseen – that were performed and experienced during these exceptional events. Megan is supervised by Dr. Nancy E. van Deusen, for whom she has been a researcher on her SSHRC-funded project on Indigenous slavery in the Americas. Megan was also co-chair of the McGill-Queen’s Graduate History Conference in 2023, and has participated in various conferences and forums in Canada and the US.
Before coming to Queen’s, she worked at Brantwood, the former home of John Ruskin, as Collections Manager. Megan completed her MA in North American Studies from Leiden University in 2017 and received the Theodore Roosevelt American History Award from the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies for her thesis. She completed a BA Hons in English Literature from the University of Exeter in 2016.
Research Interests
Beyond her doctoral project, Megan is interested in research relating to:
Women’s Faith Communities
Witchcraft
Dreams, Visions and Other Invisible Worlds
Sensory History
Religion & Magic
European Folk Beliefs
Megan is currently drawing towards the end of her PhD project, and is keen to translate the knowledge and methodologies she has gathered around women’s imaginative, invisible worlds to other communities around the wider Atlantic region.
Why Written in the Waves?
“I have spent almost all my life living along the west coast of Great Britain; in Devon, Cumbria and the Scottish Highlands. The Atlantic Ocean has always been a fundamental part of my life, and of the communities I am a part of. Though my current research project is focused on New England, it is drawn from a love of weaving the ideas, beliefs and folkways of European, African, Caribbean and North American peoples as they converge around the margins of the Atlantic world. My work looks at the sharing of ideas and beliefs in the collective experience and networks of women. I hope that Written in the Waves can be one such network - I’m delighted to be a part of this wonderful collaborative creative venture!”
Contact Megan: