I am a historian of modern Europe, with particular interests in France and the surrounding territories from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. My next book centres on a murder trial from 1938 and the stories of witchcraft that underlay it.

My research has explored magic and the Occult, including their connections to the history of science and medicine, as well as gender and family history, rural history, crime history, folklore, and anthropology. I am increasingly drawn to questions of the sensitive and imaginative quantification and visualisation of historic cultures and lives. I also have a longstanding interest in the field of 'creative histories:' histories that are made in collaborative and imaginative ways, and told in formats other than straightforward non-fiction prose, such as theatre, games, poetry, and comics.

I blog on research, methods, and the highs and lows of the job here.

I have held fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research and Utah State University, and taught at the University of Oxford and Utah State University.

I am currently writing about witchcrafts in France c.1790-1940.
Although witchcraft was effectively decriminalized in 1682, conflicts over sorcery not only continued into the eighteenth century, but beyond the Revolution of 1789, and across the whole nineteenth century. French newspapers reported hundreds of criminal trials involving witchcraft in this period. Many were trials of ‘witches’ for fraud, or illegal medical practices, but there were over a hundred murder trials where the motive was suspicion of witchcraft. This book centres on a murder case in 1938, using this story as the way in to an exploration of broader patterns across all of France, across a century and a half.

Where does this ‘modern’ witchcraft fit into the accepted narratives of the long nineteenth century? My project is particularly concerned with the connections between new medical, legal, psychological, scientific, and para-scientific ideas and the witches. Far from stamping out ‘superstition’, the spread of literacy and new ideas gave witchcraft wider resonances, intensifying and legitimating modern social conflicts. 

My first book, Body and Tradition in Nineteenth-Century France: Félix Arnaudin and the Moorlands of Gascony, 1870-1914 asks what the rural population thought important in their own lives during this period of dramatic change, in a region that arguably saw more rapid transformation than any other in France, the moorlands of Gascony. To answer this question, it focuses on Félix Arnaudin's folklore collection. Using songs, dialect speech and tales, the book argues that the labouring population understood the changes during the period of modernization in terms of their own bodies. 

I am also the co-author of Creative Histories of Witchcraft: France, 1790-1940, a hands-on guide to creative practice as historical research which uses witchcraft as a case study.

As editor of the Cambridge University Press series 'Elements in Magic', I am always keen to hear from anyone with proposals for short books about magic, from any perspective.

Contact

Office: 2.4, 26-7 St Michael’s Park

Email: [email protected]

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/willpooley.bsky.social

Consultation hours (for Bristol students): https://calendly.com/wp15991

Research Supervision

I welcome enquiries about postgraduate work on any topic in nineteenth-century French history, and would be especially interested to hear from students who want to work on criminal justice, modern witchcraft, folklore, or the Occult.

I am also interested in supervising students who want to combine creative practice of any kind with historical research.

I am currently the Programme Director for the MA History.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you would like to discuss your research plans.

Teaching

I teach undergraduate courses on topics including crime in the age of empire, the modern histories of witchcraft (after the 18th century), the Napoleonic Wars, the French Revolution, public history, and creative historical collaborations and projects.