Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Pollution and Purity: Understanding Voices as Punishment for Un-Wholly Sins (2022)
Book Chapter
Powell, A. J. (2022). Pollution and Purity: Understanding Voices as Punishment for Un-Wholly Sins. In A. Woods, B. Alderson-Day, & C. Fernyhough (Eds.), Voices in Psychosis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (82-90). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898388.003.0010

Drawing on Mary Douglas’ influential text Purity and Danger, with its argument about the structures of pollution and purity that inhere in many cultures, this chapter seeks to explore the link between individual voice-hearers’ understandings of their... Read More about Pollution and Purity: Understanding Voices as Punishment for Un-Wholly Sins.

Voice-hearing across the continuum: a phenomenology of spiritual voices (2022)
Journal Article
Moseley, P., Powell, A., Woods, A., Fernyhough, C., & Alderson-Day, B. (2022). Voice-hearing across the continuum: a phenomenology of spiritual voices. Schizophrenia Bulletin: The Journal of Psychoses and Related Disorders, 48(5), 1066-1074. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbac054

Background and Hypothesis: Voice-hearing in clinical and nonclinical groups has previously been compared using standardized assessments of psychotic experiences. Findings from several studies suggest that nonclinical voice-hearing is distinguished by... Read More about Voice-hearing across the continuum: a phenomenology of spiritual voices.

Voices, Visions and the Spiritual Journey (2021)
Book Chapter
Clarke, I., & Powell, A. J. (in press). Voices, Visions and the Spiritual Journey. In S. Aris, H. Garraway, & H. Gilbert (Eds.), Mental Health, Spirituality and Well-being: A Handbook for Health and Social Care Professionals, Service Users and Carers. Pavilion

By-Products or By Design? Considering Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind (2021)
Journal Article
Powell, A. J., & Cook, C. C. (2021). By-Products or By Design? Considering Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 7(1), 73-84. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.20092

Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind seeks to bring the theories and discoveries of the Cognitive Science of Religion to broader discussions of mental health. In doing so, the authors introduce auditory verbal hallucinations as one example of... Read More about By-Products or By Design? Considering Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind.

The etheric place: Notes on finding the supernatural at the boundaries of sleep (2021)
Journal Article
Powell, A., & Cook, C. C. (2021). The etheric place: Notes on finding the supernatural at the boundaries of sleep. Journal for the study of religious experience, 6(1), 45-51

Whilst conducting qualitative studies with both Christians who report hearing supernatural voices and Spiritualists who report ‘clairaudience’, we have encountered numerous instances of what appeared to be hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences being... Read More about The etheric place: Notes on finding the supernatural at the boundaries of sleep.

When spirits speak: Absorption, attribution, and identity among spiritualists who report ‘clairaudient’ voice experiences (2020)
Journal Article
Powell, A., & Moseley, P. (2020). When spirits speak: Absorption, attribution, and identity among spiritualists who report ‘clairaudient’ voice experiences. Mental Health, Religion and Culture, 23(10), 841-856. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2020.1793310

For mental health researchers and others committed to a bio-cultural understanding of religious experience, there is a need for empirical studies capable of shedding light on the interplay between beliefs, personalities, and the occurrence of anomalo... Read More about When spirits speak: Absorption, attribution, and identity among spiritualists who report ‘clairaudient’ voice experiences.

Hearing spiritually significant voices: A phenomenological survey and taxonomy (2020)
Journal Article
Cook, C. C., Powell, A., Alderson-Day, B., & Woods, A. (2022). Hearing spiritually significant voices: A phenomenological survey and taxonomy. Medical Humanities, 48(3), 273-284. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2020-012021

Whereas previous research in the medical humanities has tended to neglect theology and religious studies, these disciplines sometimes have a very important contribution to make. The hearing of spiritually significant voices provides a case in point.... Read More about Hearing spiritually significant voices: A phenomenological survey and taxonomy.

‘A Simple and Warm Common Humanity’: Self-Transcendence and Restless Resilience in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology (2019)
Book Chapter
Powell, A. J. (2019). ‘A Simple and Warm Common Humanity’: Self-Transcendence and Restless Resilience in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology. In C. Cook, & N. White (Eds.), Biblical and theological visions of resilience. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429001185-14

This chapter seeks to identify the particular influence theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s experiences of trauma and suffering during the Second World War had on his subsequent theology of hope, before then explicating how those experiences and that theolo... Read More about ‘A Simple and Warm Common Humanity’: Self-Transcendence and Restless Resilience in Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology.

The Hearing Voices Movement as Postmodern Religion-Making: Meaning, Power, Sacralisation, Identity (2017)
Journal Article
Powell, A. J. (2017). The Hearing Voices Movement as Postmodern Religion-Making: Meaning, Power, Sacralisation, Identity. Implicit Religion, 20(2), 105-126. https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.32688

Over the past 40 or 50 years, scholars of religion have frequently attempted to use the tools of social science to analyse, describe, and explain the relevance and persistence of religion in the modern world. With the bold predictions of the seculari... Read More about The Hearing Voices Movement as Postmodern Religion-Making: Meaning, Power, Sacralisation, Identity.

Functionalism or Fallacy: Re-locating Hans Mol’s Identity Theory (2017)
Journal Article
Powell, A. J. (2017). Functionalism or Fallacy: Re-locating Hans Mol’s Identity Theory. Italian Sociological Review, 7(1), 63-85. https://doi.org/10.13136/isr.v7i1.149

In this paper, the identity theory of religion outline by sociologist Hans Mol in the 1970s is introduced and located among the various competing theories of the mid-20th century. Using such comparisons, particularly with enigmatic sociological figur... Read More about Functionalism or Fallacy: Re-locating Hans Mol’s Identity Theory.

The Place of Identity Dissonance and Emotional Motivations in Bio-Cultural Models of Religious Experience: A Report from the 19th Century (2017)
Journal Article
Powell, A. J. (2017). The Place of Identity Dissonance and Emotional Motivations in Bio-Cultural Models of Religious Experience: A Report from the 19th Century. Journal for the study of religious experience, 3(1), 91-105

Durham University’s ‘Hearing the Voice’ project involves a multi-disciplinary exploration of hallucinatorytype phenomena in an attempt to revaluate and reframe discussions of these experiences. As part of this project, contemporaneous religious exper... Read More about The Place of Identity Dissonance and Emotional Motivations in Bio-Cultural Models of Religious Experience: A Report from the 19th Century.