Women and Parapsychology Revisited

In 1991, a conference of the Parapsychology Foundation took place with the title Women and Parapsychology dealing with several aspects of women in the research area of parapsychology. It addressed scientific career, publication of articles, contributions to and experiences in the field made by women, women’s role in the history of parapsychology and questions of feminist approaches to psi research. This event resulted in a proceedings edited by Lisette Coly and Rhea White (1994), which contains the papers and discussions from the conference.

Thirty years later, it seems like a good time to revisit this important topic and ask about the current trends and progress of women in parapsychology. An online survey was created for this purpose. With this survey, women active in this research field were asked about their experiences and assessment of the situation today, 30 years after the conference. The survey consists of 32 items asking for socio-demographic data, involvement in parapsychological research and gender-related experiences in this research field.

The term parapsychology is used in a broad sense including the study of psi phenomena of different kinds (extrasensory perceptions, telepathy, precognition etc.) in different settings (laboratory, field studies) as well as research into other paranormal claims such as near-death experiences, reincarnation, mediumism, survival research etc.

In addition to this online survey, a special issue of the Journal of Anomalistics / Zeitschrift für Anomalistik will be devoted to this topic and will be published in December 2022. Nancy L. Zingrone and Cedar S. Leverett will serve as guest editors for this issue. It will include invited papers as well as articles submitted through a call for papers.

Project leadership: Dr. Gerhard Mayer

Project leadership: Nancy L. Zingrone and Cedar S. Leverett (independent researchers)