I’m a past Research Fellow at the University College of London and an Emerita Professor of Art History and Critical Studies at the Victoria College of Art. In 2005 I was awarded a Marie Curie PhD. Fellowship for my interdisciplinary dissertation on Renaissance portrayals of women in art and sixteenth-century Witch Hunt discourses. With many interdisciplinary crossover scholarly/popular readership texts, my publishing history includes the much-cited essay, “The Saturnine History of Jews and Witches,” which appeared in Preternature (Vol. 3, No. 1) in 2014, and my book chapter, "Pollution and Desire in Hans Baldung Grien: The Abject, Erotic Spell of the Witch and Dragon" in Angeliki Pollali and Berthold Hub, Eds., Images of Sex and Desire in Renaissance Art and Modern Historiography (Routledge, 2017). My book, Abject Eroticism in Northern Renaissance Art: the Witches and Femme Fatales of Hans Baldung Grien, with a Foreword by Joseph Leo Koerner, was published by Bloomsbury London in 2020, and I served as Editor for the anthology of essays titled Trans-Disciplinary Migrations: Science, the Sacred, and the Arts, published in late 2024 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

My academic publications to date have mainly focused on representations of women and the gendering of evil “defect” in classical humanist discourses, cross-referencing these figures to historical art, natural philosophy, medicine, theology, science and literature. For general readership, I’ve co-authored several books on Witchcraft culture, philosophy and practice, including The Witch’s Book of Days (Beach Holme, 1993) and The Witch’s Wheel with Jessica North O’Connell (forthcoming in 2027). Earlier works for popular readership focused on folklore, fairy tales, sacred narratives and wonder tales that shape traditional Western concepts of initiatory magic and personal and cultural transformation. These included the well-reviewed coming of age tale for women and girls, The Cup of Mari Anu (Horned Owl, 1994), and my work on the magically transformative agency of cross-cultural story narratives, The Journey of the Bard (Horned Owl, 1995). I’ve contributed to anthologies of fiction with “I, Jezebel” in Mother, the Verb (Friesen Press, 2022, editor Linda Rogers) and an upcoming collection of speculative and fantasy fiction edited by Lezlie Kinyon. Recent literary journal publications include “Yonec, A Tale Beloved of Marie de France” (Roses and Wildflowers Magazine of Mythopoeia and Fabulism, Number One, Volume One, Spring 2024) and “Tam Lin, A Scottish Tale of Love, Redemption and Dark Magic” (Roses and Wildflowers.., Number One, Volume Two, Spring 2025).

I also write art and cultural criticism. My essays, reviews and artists’ profiles have been published in Vie Des Arts, Border Crossings, Artichoke, BC BookWorld, The Malahat Review and Femme Arts Review in Canada, and The Brooklyn Rail and Coreopsis Journal of Myth and Theatre in the U.S. I’ve authored gallery and museum essays for many prominent artists, including renowned Canadian artists Charles Malinsky (“Anatomy of a Crime,” in Charles Malinsky: New Works, Fran Willis Gallery, Victoria, BC, 1994) and Barbara Bickel (“Magical Bodies: A Collaborative Vision,” in Elicit Bodies, Exhibition Catalogue, Nané Jordan, Ed., In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute, Vancouver, BC, 2006). My essay, “The Hags, Harridans, Viragos and Crones of Hans Baldung Grien,” appeared in the museum anthology Hans Baldung Grien: New perspectives on his work edited by Holger Jacob- Friesen and Oliver Jehle (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Germany, 2019). More recently I’ve composed monographs for the prominent New York artists, Rachel Feinstein (“Time Traveling in Rachel Feinstein’s Mirror,” in Rachel Feinstein: Mirror, Gagosian, 2022), and Anna Weyant (“The Two Anna Weyants,” in Anna Weyant: Baby, It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over, Gagosian, 2023). “On the Road, Back on the Farm: The Artist, the Women, and Me,” appeared in Troubleshooting: Making Photographs with Dona Ann McAdams (exhibition catalogue, Southern Vermont Arts Center), and “Rachel Feinstein’s Classical Cannon: Saints, Sinners, Angels and Heroines” was published in Rachel Feinstein in Florence (artist’s book, Silvana Editoriale, Italy) in 2026. Recent public talks I’ve delivered include “A Conversation With Rachel Feinstein and Yvonne Owens” at the New York Academy of Art in 2023, and “Where Did the Witch’s Hat Come From? The Checkered Past of a Pointy Icon,” an online lecture and power-point presentation for The Last Tuesday Society (U.K.) in 2025. I’m currently collaborating with Dona Ann McAdams on creating an interdisciplinary multi-media work on the powerful feminine icon known in Ireland as Sheela Na Gig. Found in stone carvings, at sacred sites, in church architecture and other historic monuments dating from prehistory through the medieval period and the Enlightenment, Sheela Na Gig figures are thematically related to the ancient European Sacred Ancestor deities Artimpasa and Melusine, representing three aspects of the same ancient archetype, the powerful birth-giving, serpent-legged or fish-tailed Goddess.