Andy Letcher

Dr Andy Letcher is a scholar of religion specialising in psychedelic and ‘dark green’ spiritualities and new religious movements. He is Senior Lecturer at both Schumacher College, Devon UK – where he is the Programme Lead for the MA Engaged Ecology –, and at the University of Exeter, where he teaches on the PGCert Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine and Culture. He is the author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom (Faber & Faber, 2006), and numerous papers on psychedelics, ecology, animism and paganism.

Andy researches the contemporary use of psychedelics with a particular focus on the role psychedelics might play in our cultivating an ecological self. He is currently researching ritual and animistic usage of psychedelics by contemporary British Druids, and the contemporary use of the Fly Agaric mushroom.

He has been a guest on the Green Dreamer, Hive, Living Mirrors and Mushroom Hour podcasts, and appeared at Glastonbury, Shambhala, Green Man and Medicine festivals. A folk musician, he plays English bagpipes, low whistle, and Dark Age lyre.