Gillian Bennett (née Lawley; 25 September 1939 – 13 December 2023) was a British folklorist, known for her work on contemporary legends.
[2] She enrolled as a mature graduate student at the University of Sheffield in 1978, where she studied at the Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language (CECTAL) under the supervision of J. D. A. Widdowson.
This initiated a number of succeeding conferences on the topic, leading to the creation in 1988 of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research (ISCLR).
[3] Bennett's two major published works are Traditions of Belief: Women and the Supernatural (1987) – which was expanded into Alas, Poor Ghost!
[11] In 2018, Bennett was awarded the Coote Lake Medal, the Folklore Society's prize for recognising "outstanding research and scholarship".