Notes on Contributors
Philip C. Almond
is Professor Emeritus in the History of Western Religious Thought at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland. Author of well over a dozen books, his most recent publications include Noah and the Flood in Western Thought (Cambridge: 2025), Buddha: Life and Afterlife between East and West (Cambridge: 2024), Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History (Cambridge: 2022), and The Antichrist: A New Biography (Cambridge: 2020). He is currently working on a history of angels.
Robin B. Barnes
is Professor Emeritus of History at Davidson College and the author of numerous studies on apocalyptic thought, astrology, prophecy, and related topics in early modern German culture. His most recent works include Astrology and Reformation (Oxford: 2016), which was awarded the Roland H. Bainton Award of the Sixteenth Century Society, and Die deutschen Kalenderschreiber im Zeitalter der Konfessionsbildung (Jena: 2018). After more important life goals, he aspires to be a sailor.
Dean Phillip Bell
is the 9th President and CEO of Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership and Professor of History. He has written or edited fourteen books in Jewish Studies and Jewish history, with a focus on early modern Jewish communities and identities. His most recent works include (as editor) The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the Twenty-First Century (London: 2023), Interreligious Resilience: Interreligious Leadership for a Pluralistic World (co-author: London, 2022), and Plague in the Early Modern World: A Documentary History (London: 2019). His most recent research, Judaism, History, and the Environment: Climate Change and Natural Disasters, is forthcoming in late 2025.
Michelle D. Brock
is Professor of History at Washington and Lee University. She is the author of Plagues of the Heart: Crisis and Covenanting in a Seventeenth-Century Scottish Town (Manchester: 2024), Satan and the Scots: The Devil in Post-Reformation Scotland, c.1560â1700 (Routledge: 2016), and (as co-editor) Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period (Cham: 2018). Her current research is on the relationship between gender and crime in early modern Scotland.
Fabián Alejandro Campagne
is Professor of Early Modern History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. His main teaching and research interests are Christian superstition, the discernment of spirits, and Renaissance demonology. He is the author of many books, including Homo catholicus, homo superstitiosus (Buenos Aires: 2002), Strix Hispanica (Buenos Aires: 2009), Profetas en ninguna tierra (Buenos Aires: 2016), and Bodin y Maldonado (Buenos Aires: 2018); he has edited or co-edited Poder y religión en el mundo moderno (Buenos Aires: 2014) and Furor Satanae (Buenos Aires: 2023). He is currently finishing a book on the role of anthropophagy in the witchesâ sabbath mythology entitled El aquelarre canibal.
David J. Collins, SJ
is Professor of History at Georgetown University. He has written extensively on the medieval cult of the saints, Renaissance humanism, and learned magic and is the author of Disenchanting Albert the Great: The Life and Afterlife of a Medieval Magician (University Park: 2024) and the editor of The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft (Cambridge: 2015) and The Sacred and the Sinister: Studies in Medieval Religion and Magic (University Park: 2019). His current research focuses on the use of natural philosophy in medieval and early modern biblical commentary.
Ismael del Olmo
is Researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Argentina) and teaches early modern History at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Among his publications are Legio: posesión diabólica y exorcismo en la Europa de los siglos XVI y XVII (Zaragoza: 2018), and, as co-editor, Christian Discourses of the Holy and the Sacred from the 15th to the 17th Century (Berlin: 2020) and La Reforma Protestante desde el margen: A 500 años del evento banal que revolucionó la cultura de Occidente (Buenos Aires: 2020). He has also published articles and book chapters on possession and exorcism in multiple national and confessional contexts. His current research deals with demonology, biblical exegesis, and incredulity in early modern Europe.
Kathryn A. Edwards
is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and past co-editor of French Historical Studies. She has published a series of books, most recently Leonardeâs Ghost: Popular Piety and âThe Appearance of a Spiritâ in 1628 (Kirksville: 2008) and (as editor) Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (Farnham: 2015), and over twenty articles and book chapters on magic, the occult, and apparitions in early modern Europe. She is currently finishing a large monograph on beliefs about ghosts titled Living with Ghosts: The Dead in European Society from the Black Death to the Enlightenment and, after that project, has several much smaller book projects under development focusing on single, early modern accounts of hauntings.
Lizanne Henderson
is Senior Lecturer in History and Programme Director of MSc Sustainable Tourism and Global Challenges (School of Social and Environmental Sustainability), University of Glasgow. She is a cultural historian of the Scottish witch hunts, folk belief, and human-animal studies with additional interests in Arctic Studies. Her publications include (co-authored) Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (East Linton: 2022) and, as editor, Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture (Edinburgh: 2009) and A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland. Her Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, 1670â1740 (Basingstoke: 2016) was winner of the Katharine Briggs Book Award. She is currently preparing her next monograph (Super)natural Animals in the Age of the Stewarts.
David Johannes Olszynski
is Research Associate (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Institut für Katholische Theologie at the Universität Koblenz. He is co-editor of Soteriologie in der spätmittelalterlichen Theologie (Münster: 2023) and Soteriologie in der frühmittelalterlichen Theologie (Münster: 2020), and he is the author of Der Teufel als Herausforderung für Theologie und Literatur der Frühen Neuzeit (Münster: 2020) as well as articles and book chapters on related subjects. His current research focuses on the performance and materiality of the sacraments.
Richard Raiswell
is Professor of History at the University of Prince Edward Island and Research Associate at the University of New Brunswick. His research is concerned with questions about the construction and assimilation of knowledge in the late medieval and early modern periods, especially responses to the new empiricism in the fields of demonology and geography. He is editor of H-Devil and author of numerous articles and book chapters. Recent co-edited work includes The Routledge History of the Devil (New York: 2025), The Medieval Devil: A Reader (Toronto: 2022), Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences (Cham: 2018), and Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period (Cham: 2018). He is currently working on a general history of the Devil, tentatively titled The Devil: A History of the Anti-West.
Juanita Feros Ruys
is Honorary Research Fellow of the Medieval and Early Modern Center of the University of Sydney and was Director of the Sydney Node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions from 2011 to 2018. She is the author of The Repentant Abelard (New York: 2014) and Demons in the Middle Ages (Bradford: 2017), and has co-edited A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Medieval Age (London: 2022) and Before Emotion: The Language of Feeling, 400â1800 (New York: 2021). She is currently completing a translation of the latter parts of William of Auvergneâs De universo creaturarum on angels and demons and preparing a monograph, with translations, on Otloh of St. Emmeramâs experiences of demonic temptation.
James Sharpe
was Professor Emeritus at the University of York, United Kingdom. He published twelve books and over sixty scholarly articles and essays, mainly on crime, violence, and witchcraft in early modern England. His monographs in these fields include Witchcraft in Early Modern England (New York: 2020), Fiery and Furious People: A History of Violence in England (London: 2016), The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Deception, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England (New York: 2000), and Crime in Early Modern England, 1550â1750 (New York: 1999). He also was the general editor for the six volumes of English Witchcraft, 1560â1736 (London: 2003).
Julien Véronèse
is Maître de conférences at the Université de Orléans (POLEN: Pouvoirs, Lettres, Normes). He has published widely on the religious and cultural history of the later Middle Ages, especially demonology, learned magic, and exorcism. His most recent books include Rituel dâexorcisme ou manuel de magie? Le manuscrit CLM 10085 de la Bayerische Staatsbibliothek de Munich (Florence: 2015) and many co-edited volumes, such as Le roi Salomon au Moyen Ãge. Savoirs et représentations (Turnhout: 2023). His current book project is on the art of conjuring demons in the Middle Ages.
Rita Voltmer
is Professor of History at the Universität Trier, and she has published widely on demonology, witchcraft, and crime in medieval and early modern Europe. Among her more recent books are Cornelius Loos: De vera et falsa magia (1592), editor and introduction (Trier: 2024), Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe (co-edited; New York: 2020), Herren und Hexen in der Nordeifel: Darstellung, Edition, Vergleiche (Wellerswist: 2018), and Hexenwissen: zum Transfer von Magie- und Zauberei-Imaginationen in interdisziplinärer Perspektive (co-edited; Trier: 2017). Her current research focuses on the European and transatlantic transfer of knowledge about magic and witchcraft; magical cultures of laughter and anti-demonology; and the historiography of witchcraft studies and their narratives, especially in the nineteenth-century and womenâs movements.
Hans de Waardt
is Professor Emeritus at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and author of many book chapters and articles on witchcraft, religious minorities, demonic possession, and challenges to witchcraft prosecutions. Among his books are Dämonische Besessenheit: zur Interpretation eines kulturhistorischen Phänomens (Bielefeld: 2005) and Mending Minds: A Cultural History of Dutch Academic Phychiatry (Rotterdam: 2005). His knowledge of early modern medicine, demonology, and witchcraft have made him an internationally-recognized expert on the life and writings of Johannes Weyer.
Gary K. Waite
is Professor Emeritus of early modern European history at the University of New Brunswick. Author/editor of ten books, he has published widely on religion and culture in the Low Countries and Europe; Anabaptism and spiritualism; the unconventional spiritualist David Joris; witchcraft and demonology; and Christian views of Muslims and Jews. He has two books relating to the Devil in the Reformation, and his most recent monographs are Anti-Anabaptist Polemics: Dutch Anabaptism and the Devil in England, 1531â166 (Kitchener: 2023) and Jews and Muslims in Seventeenth-Century Discourse: From Religious Enemies to Allies and Friends (New York: 2018). He is now working on religious nonconformists and the early Enlightenment.
Charles Zika
is a Professorial Fellow in History and previously Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre for the History of Emotions at the University of Melbourne. His interests lie in the intersection of religion, emotion, visual culture, and print in early modern Europe. Among his many publications are Feeling Exclusion: Religious Conflict, Exile and Emotions in Early Modern Europe (co-editor; New York: 2019), Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1400â1700 (co-editor; London: 2016), and The Appearance of Witchcraft: Print and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Europe (New York: 2007). His current research is on pilgrimage, objects and emotion, witchcraft imagery, and Albrecht Dürerâs material world.