People – The Penn Ghost Project

David Barnes

Associate Professor of the History and Sociology of Science

David Barnes is a historian of medicine and public health who is currently writing a history of the Lazaretto quarantine station (1801-1895) on the Delaware River outside Philadelphia. Recently he has noticed that the constituency that has consistently expressed the greatest interest in the Lazaretto historic site is the community of paranormal investigators who seem to have an insatiable appetite for exploration and investigation of certain kinds of historic sites.

Justin McDaniel

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Justin McDaniel is an associate professor of Religious Studies who has recently published a book on ghost protection and healing in Thailand (The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk, Columbia Univ. Press, 2011). He has spent time as a Buddhist monk conducting rituals to “call” and petition ghosts in the service of healing in rural and urban communities in Southeast Asia and has taught graduate courses on death and the afterlife in Buddhist cultures.

Marjorie Muecke

Assistant Dean for Global Health Affairs; Associate Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing & Midwifery Leadership; Adjunct Professor Nursing

Marjorie Muecke is a specialist in traditional healing and nursing practices, infant death, and midwifery in Thailand. She runs abroad programs for students in the School of Nursing to India, Botswana, Thailand, Nepal, and other places.

Projit Mukharji

Projit Mukharji is a historian of modern South Asia, working particularly on eastern India and Bangladesh and specializing on the history of medicine/ healing and technology. His latest research project is on the history of ghosts and healing practices in India.

Ilya Vinitsky

Professor of Slavic Studies

Ilya Vinitsky focuses on the history of Russian mystical awakenings and interactions between Russian literature and various spiritualist and occult trends originated in the West. In his book, Ghostly Paradoxes: Modern Spiritualism and Russian Culture in the Age of Realism (University of Toronto Press, 2009; Rated as “Essential” by Choice Reviews”), Vinitsky draws attention to two different aspects of the cultural communication between “spirits” and “reality” in Russian literature of the 1850-80s: (1) the semiotic and epistemological significance of Modern Spiritualism; and (2) the paradoxical refraction of various spiritualist ideas and doctrines in realist literature, particularly in the works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Leskov.

Joyce White

Archaeologist

Joyce White is an archaeologist at the Penn Museum. She is a specialist in the pre-literate cultures of Laos and has done extensive excavations on burial sites in the region. Her findings have uncovered early practices in preparing for the afterlife.