Virtual Branch Film

Professor Malcom Gaskill joined the HA Virtual Branch on Thursday 10th December 2022 to discuss the subject of his book, The Ruin of all Witches, Life and Death in the New World, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2022.

His research explores the attitudes, beliefs and treatment of people as they settled into difficult and dangerous 17th-century New World societies. Through the stories of individuals, he examines how accusations of witchcraft were started, spread and believed. In his talk he will address some of the ways in which these events had an impact on the communities in the area and beyond, leaving a legacy for generations more.

Malcolm Gaskill is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia. One of Britain's leading experts in the history of witchcraft, his works include the highly acclaimed Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans.