University College Cork

Dr Jenny Butler is a Lecturer in the Study of Religions Department and a Principal Investigator of UCC's Environmental Research Institute (ERI). She sits on the College Executive Management Committee (CEMC), the CACSSS Graduate Studies Committee, and on the University's Academic Council (including the AC Learning and Teaching Committee). In the Study of Religions Department, she is Director of Graduate Studies (PhD, MA - Religions, and Higher Diploma programmes) and teaches on Western esotericism, new and emergent religious movements, folk religion, and religions in the Irish context. She is an External Graduate Faculty Member of the University of Maine.

She is an internationally established researcher in the area of new religious movements and is a leading scholar in her field, having conducted the first ever ethnographic study of Irish contemporary Paganism. Her monograph 21st Century Irish Paganism: Worldview, Ritual, Identity is forthcoming from Routledge. She is also working on the edited collections Folk Metal: Critical Essays on Identity, Myth and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Twin Peaks Phenomenon: Essays on a Show Both Wonderful and Strange (McFarland).

As an active scholar, she has given over 100 conference presentations and invited lectures in Ireland and internationally. Among her most recent keynote addresses at international conferences were 'Invoking Ireland: Celticity, Landscape and Identity in Irish Literary Tradition' at the Landscape and Identity in Contemporary British and Irish Literature Conference, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, 10-11 May 2024 (Keynote supported by the Irish Embassy in Poland), and 'The Celtic Golden Age and Mystical Ireland: Historical Constructs and Contemporary Identities' at the Historical Fictions Research Network Conference, 17-19 February 2023.

Dr Butler is currently the President of The Irish Society for the Academic Study of Religions (ISASR) and an elected Executive Committee Member (Second Term, Publications Officer) of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR). She is a Committee Member of the Anthropological Association of Ireland (AAI). Her research interests are placed at the nexus of religion, culture and the environment, reflected in her scholarly collaborative activities: she is Co-Convenor of the UCC Eco-Humanities Research Group and a participant of the PRAXIS project, UCC Centre for Global Development. Dr Butler is an Officer of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) and she founded the ESSWE Regional Research Network, the Irish Network for the Study of Esotericism and Paganism (INSEP). She is on the American Academy of Religion (AAR) Pagan Studies Unit Steering Committee.

Dr Butler has a wealth of experience of guest editing and working with academic journal teams and is currently on the Editorial Board of The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies, and the Editorial Board of Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore. She is the Book Reviews Editor of Numen: International Review for the History of Religions.

Dr Butler is the General Editor of Brill's Index to the Study of Religions Online (ISRO), a cross-searchable database and bibliography of journal article abstracts which contribute to the academic study of religions and which facilitates the work and international collaboration of all scholars working in this field.

Dr Butler has been in the Fáilte Ireland Conference Ambassador Club since 2016 and has been involved in organizing eleven conferences in Ireland, nine of which were hosted by UCC. She has brought four major international, interdisciplinary conferences to University College Cork. She has won four Conference Ambassador Awards from Cork Convention Bureau for conferences organized in 2016, 2019, and 2022; for the 19th European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) Conference on the theme of "Religions and States of Freedom" (2022), she was the overall winner of the Associate Conference Award presented to her by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney. In addition, she won a Conference Ambassador Award from Fáilte Ireland in 2023.  

Dr Butler's scholarly standing is evidenced by several distinguished awards and accolades, and she has been a Government of Ireland Research Scholar (2001-2004), a Dobbin Scholar (2010) and a Charlemont Scholar (2017). For two years running (2000 and 2001), she achieved the designation of UCC College Scholar and, since then, her research has been supported by the Irish Research Council, the Royal Irish Academy, the Ireland-Canada University Foundation, and the Ireland-Newfoundland Partnership (Department of the Taoiseach).

Dr Butler is currently working on a comparative ethnographic project, Fairy Lore and Landscapes, on otherworldly beings and legends tied to landscapes. The project explores the interconnections of worldviews, customs, and sense of place as intangible cultural heritage.

Dr Butler is interested in the interconnection of her work with art and culture and in her work has collaborated with The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, The Source Arts Centre, Thurles, The Glucksman Gallery, Cork, The Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, St Luke's Crypt, Cork, Galway Arts Centre, the Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, and The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities (London). She has also collaborated on events with bookshops, including Treadwell's Books, London and Peter Harrington Rare Books, London.

Dr Butler has featured on documentaries and shows on The Smithsonian Channel, The History Channel, VisionTV, RTÉ, Virgin Media, and TG4.

Her key interests are theory and method in the study of religions, the intersection of religions, folklore, and national and cultural identities, death studies, ritual studies, and religion and popular culture.

Dr Butler's modules and teaching areas are at the forefront, in pedagogical terms, of understanding the changing Irish religious landscape in the context of the country's cultural and social history and she currently coordinates and teaches the modules RG2309: Contemporary Religions in Ireland, RG2314: Folk Religion in a Global Age, and RG2310: Western Esotericism and New Religious Movements.

Dr Butler's teaching areas include the examination of worldviews, traditional cosmologies, and ritual. Her teaching interests range from the customs and beliefs of the early modern period in Ireland to contemporary urban ethnology, popular culture, visual culture and media studies and how these areas intersect with religions.

Dr Butler holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (awarded by UCC), a Certificate in Continuing Professional Development in Digital Education (awarded by UCC), a Digital Badge in Universal Design in Learning (UDL) and a Postgraduate Research Supervision Digital Badge, both awarded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. She also completed University College Cork's Connected Curriculum Digital Badge.

Dr Butler has worked in the area of Adult Education through University College Cork's Centre for Adult Continuing Education (CACE) (2011-Present), and is currently the CACSSS Representative on the ACE Short Course Approval Board. She has also taught through UCC's Diploma in Local and Regional Studies. Additionally, she has worked as an instructor for the Vocational Education Committee's (VEC) Adult Education community-based programmes as well as working for the UCC Disability Support Service, UCC.

Dr Butler also has extensive experience working with children and teenagers and from 2003-2008, she was employed with the Centre for Talented Youth, Ireland (CTYI) and has taught on a variety of programmes, including summer schools. 

Dr Butler has been a Visiting Lecturer through the Erasmus+ Teaching Staff Mobility Programme at universities in Italy (2022), Turkey (2020), Croatia (2019), Greece (2018), Poland (2016), Iceland (2011) and Finland (2009).