Team Vanga is taking a qualitative, interdisciplinary approach to examine the influence and modern re-interpretation of Baba Vanga, a Bulgarian psychic/mystic/extrasensii, who is well known in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Baba Vanga
Baba (or Grandmother) Vanga became famous in her lifetime (1911-1996) and continues to capture the imagination of Bulgarians and a global (virtual) public who revere her as psychic, seer, healer, saint, and prophet, or revile her as charlatan, spy, or medium for “demons”. GDIL’s Vanga team, headed by Dr. Mary Neuburger, is taking an interdisciplinary approach to study of the Vanga phenomenon in its national, regional, and global context from the Cold War era until today. Cullan Bendig heads Team Vanga’s efforts to unravel how and why Vanga became a psychic/paranormal phenomenon by the mid-20th century — a period when psychics and the paranormal became objects not only of public fascination, but also of scientific study and state attention. Adam Hanzel co-leads Team Vanga and focuses team research on Vanga’s changing place in religious rhetoric and practice, namely her relationship to the Bulgarian but also the Russian Orthodox Church. He is also in charge of Vanga’s contemporary global afterlife on the web.
Read our blog post here: https://gdil.org/the-vanga-files/
Team Vanga has been archiving and reading material related to physics, religion, and society in Eastern Europe since Spring 2022. We are currently at the stage where we can begin writing two articles for academic journals as well as an article for the UT history website “Not Even Past.” In terms of onboarding, the reading load is (subjectively) a lot more interesting than more theoretically heavy topics at GDIL; Team Vanga regularly has relevant works that cover topics from aliens, psychic powers and the state, and predicting Putin’s return of Russia to a place of global power, to Bulgarian Orthodoxy, theories of power and belief, and alternative eastern orthodoxies that oppose the official Orthodox Church in Russia and Bulgaria.
When: Fridays at 2:30pm
Where: Burdine 216
We also have our own Vanga emoji!