Dr Andrew Sneddon (BA hons, Hertfordshire; M.Litt, St Andrews; PhD Lancaster) is a social and cultural historian specialising in the history of disability, medicine, magic, witchcraft, and the wider supernatural. He has published widely on these topics and has led a variety of related public history projects.

Dr Sneddon has extensive experience of working with the media to produce podcasts, television and radio programmes based on his research with broascasters including, Disney, National Geographic, RTE, TG4, UTV, and the BBC. 

He served for six years as president of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies and is a member of the AHRC's Peer Review College and a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He was also Business Editor for the Irish Economic and Social History Society and is currently joint editor of international historical journal, Irish Historical Studies published by Cambridge University Press. He regularly reviews and peer reviews for leading academic journals and publishers.

Dr Sneddon previously taught at the University of Glasgow and Queen's University, Belfast and his post-doctoral work was completed on the Levelhulme-funded, Irish Legislation Project, directed by Professos David Hayton and James Kelly. He was then Research Fellow in the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's working on eighteenth-century medical history, and was appointed lecturer in International History at Ulster University in 2009. 

Dr Sneddon's latest research explores medicine, witchcraft, magic and the supernatural in a comparative framework from later medieval times to the modern period. His books include, Witchcraft and Whigs (Manchester University Press), Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Palgrave), Representing Magic in Modern Ireland: Belief, History and Culture (Cambridge University Press), Possessed by the Devil: the History of the Islandmagee Witch Trials, 1711 (History Press, 2nd ed. 2024). He is editor of A Cultural History of Magic in the Enlightenment, vol. 4 (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2025), and is currently writing a book for Cambridge University Press with the working title, Disability and Magic in early Modern Britain and America.

His academic articles have been published in leading peer reviewed journals, including Preternature, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Irish Historical Studies, The Historical Journal and Cultural and Social History, and his essays/chapters have appeared in numerous edited books and handbooks published by Routledge, Palgrave, Bloomsbury and Oxford University Press.

Dr Sneddon currently leads, with Dr Victoria McCollum (Cinematic Arts), the 'Islandmagee Witches 1711' project. This collaborative, multidisciplinary, public history project uses creative writing and new technologies to explore Ireland’s last witch trial held in County Antrim in 1711. Project outputs include: digitised trial records, a graphic novel, a ‘serious’ video game, an original musical score, and a Virtual Reality Application, a production of a play, a museum Exhibition and permanent, Islandmagee Witches' Hub at Carrickfergus Museum. Project website: w1711.org.

He has received, as both Principal and Co-Investigator, research grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Wellcome Trust, Connected NI, the Lottery Heritage Fund, the Ulster Scots Brodcast Fund, and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure.

Current Teaching

Dr Sneddon's undergraduate teaching at Ulster University focuses on politics, religion, culture, medicine and magic in Europe and Colonial America in the early modern and modern periods. 

HIS140, ‘Disenchanted Land: Culture and Society in Early Modern Europe.’ 

HIS337, ‘Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain and Ireland.’ 

HIS337, ‘History in Practice: Preparing and Planning a History Research Project.’

HIS 560, ‘Witchcraft and Magic in early modern Europe and Colonial New England.’

HIS130, ‘Making History: Skills for Historians.’

HIS 517, Undergraduate History Research Project, supervisor.

MA in History, HIS703, ‘Historian’s Craft: Writing History.’

Administrative Roles

Edge Award co-ordinator, History 

Co-lead, School History Society

Widening Access liaison, History

Employee Advisory Board, AHSS Faculty

Co-Director, Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies

Research Mentor, AHSS Faculty

Employability Lead, History

Wellbeing Champion, School of Arts and Humanities (2018-2022)

Co-Director, Centre History of Medicine in Ireland, CHOMI (2009-2019)

Current PHD Supervision 

- 'Voices of Ulster's Poor: Charitable Requests, 1850s-1920s.'

- 'Dr Francis Moylan, 1735-1815, Catholic Bishop of Cork.'

-'A re-evaluation of the 'Irish Brigades' and the folklore surrounding the 'Wild Geese' before and after the Irish diaspora during the Jacobite period'.

- 'Longitudual study of mental health in young men in the Northwest Ireland 1829-1919'.

 Completed PhD Supervision

-S. Scullion,  'Managing Madness: Asylums in Ulster 1845-1914'.https://pure.ulster.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/managing-madness

- Lauren Bell, 'The Great Scottish Migration to Ulster in the 1690s'

- Nigel Farrell, 'Asiatic cholera and the development of public health in Belfast 1832-1878' https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.669695

- Jodie Shevlin, 'The Supernatural in Catholic Ireland in the Long Nineteenth-Century' https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=1&uin=uk.bl.ethos.821049

- John Fulton, 'Clerics, Conjurors and courtrooms : witchcraft, magic and religion in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ireland'. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.706467