During 2024 I’m continuing to research olfaction as a part of religious, spiritual, and extraordinary human experiencing. Study of what these experiences actually smell like – together with the wider implications of such study – continues to be a surprisingly under-researched area so I’m delighted to be treading still relatively untrodden and unexplored territory. I presented some early results of this work at the Quaker Fellowship for Afterlife Studies’ annual conference between the 19th and 21st of April last year at Charney Manor in Charney Bassett, Oxfordshire, where I gave a paper under the conference’s general theme: ‘What next – and how do we prepare for it?’ Later that year I gave an updated account of that talk at one of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena’s Thursday webinars.

This year I’ll be sharing the findings of another ‘avenue’ of my olfaction research with a talk on premonitions, preternatural knowledge and olfaction at the Unitarian Society for Psychical Studies’ annual conference at Warwick on 28th September. You can find more details here and on the ‘Home’ page:

I have enjoyed a long and fruitful association with the Society so I was also delighted to present a paper on my ‘Fifth Love’ research to the Midland Unitarian Association in Birmingham on 23rd March. My book based on that research is still available and you can find it under the ‘Books’ tab on this website.

I took a break from speaking engagements in 2022 in order to concentrate on some other research and writing projects but over the weekend of 3rd – 5th September 2021 I was delighted to speak at the Annual Conference of the Churches Fellowship For Psychical and Spiritual Studies which was held at The Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Derbyshire. The theme of the conference was ‘Inspiration’ and my talk was entitled: ‘A Sacred ‘Something’: Spiritual Awareness Within the Great Outdoors.’ Many thanks to everyone involved and in particular to Jo and Matt Arnold for organising the event so efficiently and for ensuring that it ran so smoothly. You can find the text of my talk over on my blog page.

Covid pretty much put paid to events for the rest of 2021 (and, of course, 2020 too), but on Saturday 19th October 2019 I was delighted to take part with Dr Rupert Sheldrake in the Alister Hardy Trust 50th Anniversary Celebration of the establishment of the Religious Experience Research Unit by Sir Alister Hardy. As my contribution, I gave a talk during the afternoon entitled ‘Researching in the RERC Archive’, drawing on the experience I gained during the writing of my first three books.

An expanded version of my paper appeared in the December 2020 issue of the the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience:  ‘Researching In The RERC Archive.’ Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, Vol 6, No 1, 16 December 2020, pp 11-23, and you can find it here: Researching in the RERC Archive | Journal for the Study of Religious Experience (tsd.ac.uk)