Research Student Seminar: Jon Sharp, 'Towards a heuristic definition of occult practice' (procedural paper)

At last week's procedural paper seminar, Jon Sharp gave us a fascinating account of his attempts to construct a conceptual framework for analysing occult practice. Though analysing the challenges he has faced in researching a relatively unresearched area, Jon's presentation had many valuable insights for those of us working in more conventional fields of research in EDU. He drew attention to the ethical dilemmas around his position as a practitioner-researcher, the difficulties of moving beyond description of occult practices to enable the reader to share an insider perspective in terms of understanding and whether reflective (occult) practice can be viewed as a form of research. These factors led Jon to change his PhD research from what he termed an 'EDU-friendly' study of occult practice through participant observation, to his current focus on philosophical enquiry.