168: Maggie Webster

Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

Maggie Webster is my fantastic guest this week, five years to the day since I broadcast my first Nostalgia Interviews podcast episode.
Maggie teaches Religious Education at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, and we learn that she did a PhD in Lampeter which explored how people become witches on social media. Maggie discusses her fieldwork in which she interviewed 13 witches who ranged in age from 20 to 70, and how among other things they fought back against stereotypes.
We talk about how there was a coming out of the broom cupboard in the 1990s, through magazine articles, films and TV series but how even today it is very difficult to find in-person covens.
We find out how Maggie was destined to do this research on contemporary witchcraft, we learn about her research drivers and how it was as much a hobby as work as she would read all fiction and watch films about witches in her downtime.
We talk about Witch Lit and The Witches of Eastwick and how films today are less heteronormative than they were a few decades ago. Maggie has compared the two versions of Hocus Pocus, thirty years apart, in terms of showing how we have changed as a society.
We discuss Eurovision 2023 which was just about to take place when we recorded the interview, and we learn that Maggie was brought up in a working class family in Bangor, North Wales. She talks about the role of music as a child especially listening to Leo Sayer when cleaning the house, and hearing her Dad singing ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ to help when she was anxious.
We move on to talk about the Welsh hiraeth and nostalgic longing in relation to Beddgelert, and she talks about the differences between the campus where she works and that of Lampeter, discussing along the way subcultures and Dungeons and Dragons.
Maggie then talks about how she ended up going to university and the importance of education having come from a background where her mother was not allowed to have one.
We find out why Maggie wanted to study religion and the importance of pluralism and we discuss her eclectic religious predilections. (You also get to hear my confession regarding church and the Top 40 singles chart.) We also find out how Maggie learns from what she has done and how it has made her the person (and academic) she is today.
Then, at the end of the interview, Maggie reflects on her educational journey where becoming an academic was never on the cards, but that she has always been set on a path where she can help and make a difference to people’s lives.