Kurosh Amoui
is PhD (abd) at York University, Toronto, Canada. His research brings together frameworks of World Literature and Comparative Literature with the Study of Esotericism. He has contributed to Brill’s forthcoming Dictionary of Contemporary Esotericism, and is currently writing on the esoteric and the Islamicate in works of Sadegh Hedayat, Jorge Luis Borges, and the cut-up collaborations of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Egil Asprem
PhD, is Professor in the History of Religions at Stockholm University. He is the editor-in-chief of Aries and a long-term board member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism.
Ionuț Daniel Băncilă
PhD, is a scientifical researcher at the Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy (Bucharest). He studied Orthodox Theology in Sibiu (Romania) and received his PhD at Humboldt University, in Berlin, with a dissertation on Mandaeism and Manichaeism. He was a research associate at the Univerisity of Erfurt and Fellow of the Einstein Center “Chronoi”, in Berlin. He has published extensively on Gnosticism, Western esotericism in Eastern Europe and Orthodox Christianity. His latest publication is “Esotericism in Romanian Religious History”, published in Aries journal 23 (2023).
Léo Bernard
is Postdoctoral fellow in history at the Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société (ifris). He holds a PhD in History and Religious Studies from the École Pratique des Hautes Études. His doctoral thesis (defended in 2021) focused on the relations between esoteric currents and medical holism in France during the interwar period. His research lies at the crossroads of Religious Studies and the History of Science and Health. He is the co-founder and current president of the Association Francophone pour l’Étude Universitaire des Courants Ésotériques (fréso).
Konstantin Burmistrov
PhD, is Deputy Director for Research and senior researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the Islamic World of the ras Institute of Philosophy. Since 2000, he has lectured on the history of Jewish mysticism and philosophy at
Keith Edward Cantú
PhD, is a Postdoctoral Fellow at fau Erlangen-Nürnburg, where he is researching connections between occultism and yoga as part of the project “Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices in a Global Perspective.” He was previously Assistant Professor (Postdoc) at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and Teaching Assistant at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he received his PhD. His monograph Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga, will be published with Oxford University Press in 2023. He also has published work related to the Bāul Fakirs of Bengal and Sanskrit alchemy.
Joscelyn Godwin
PhD, is Professor of Music Emeritus at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. His publications include Harmonies of Heaven and Earth, The Theosophical Enlightenment, Arktos: the Polar Myth, The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, L’Ésotérisme musical en France 1750–1950, Atlantis and the Cycles of Time, Athanasius Kircher’s Theatre of the World, The Greater and Lesser Worlds of Robert Fludd, Upstate Cauldron; translations of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz, the Ur Group’s Introduction to Magic ii and iii, and Hans Kayser’s Orpheus and Akróasis. He contributed to the first seven esswe conferences.
Richard Gordon
PhD, is honorary professor in the Department of Religious Studies (Religionsgeschichte der Antike) and associate fellow of the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Social and Cultural Research at the University of Erfurt. His main current research interest is the social history of Graeco-Roman religion and magic, on which he has published widely. Recent co-edited volumes include Beyond Priesthood: Religious entrepreneurs and innovators in the Imperial era (De Gruyter, 2017) and Choosing Magic – Contexts, Objects, Meanings: The archaeology of instrumental religion in the Latin West (De Luca Editori d’Arte 2020).
PhD, is Professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Southern Denmark. He has specialized in ‘alternative’ forms of religion in the contemporary West and has published extensively on such subjects as New Age religion, movements in the Theosophical tradition, esotericism, and alternative archaeology. He has in particular investigated the ways in which spokespersons for such currents interact with the dominant discourses of mainstream society. His publications include Alternative Christs (edited volume, Cambridge University Press, 2009), the Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements (ed. with Mikael Rothstein, Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Western Esotericism in Scandinavia (ed. with Henrik Bogdan, Brill, 2016).
Manon Hedenborg White
PhD, is Associate Professor in History of Religions at Malmö University, specializing in the study of modern Western esotericism, new religious movements, alternative spirituality, gender, sexuality, and authority. Her recent publications include The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism (Oxford University Press, 2020) and the special issue “Rethinking Aleister Crowley and Thelema” in Aries journal. She is co-founder of the Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality Network (esogen) and serves on the board of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (esswe).
Jay Johnston
PhD, is Professor at the University of Sydney. She is well-known for her contributions to scholarship on subtle bodies and aesthetics of religion, particularly developing Esoteric Aesthetics as a field of inquiry. Most recently she is author of Stag and Stone: Religion, Archaeology and Esoteric Aesthetics (Equinox, 2021) and editor of Drawing Spirit: The Role of Images and Design in the Magical Practices of Late Antiquity (de Gruyter 2022).
Fabio Mendia
is PhD in Religion Science at the Pontificia Universidade Católica, São Paulo, Brazil (puc-sp) and is a member of the neo study group on contemporary spirituality at the same institution.
Birgit Menzel
PhD, is Professor Emerita of Russian Literature and Culture at the University of Mainz in Germersheim, where she teaches at the Faculty for Translation and Interpretation. She has published 9 books, two monographs and seven (co-
Yves Mühlematter
PhD, is an expert on Theosophy, especially on Theosophical education with a focus on Annie Besant’s pedagogy. He has a strong interest in postcolonial theory and translation studies. He is also an educator and has expertise in teaching methodology. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich and a lecturer at the PHBern. His latest publication Accelerating Human Evolution by Theosophical Initiation (De Gruyter, 2023) is available as an open access publication. He is currently working on a project about the non-hegemonic history of pedagogy and alternative futures in education.
Martin Mulsow
PhD, is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Erfurt and Director of the Gotha Research Center for Early Modern Studies. From 2005–2008 he was Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA. He was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Wisenschaftskolleg in Berlin and is member of several academies. He has written extensively on Renaissance philosophy, radical enlightenment, secret societies, practices of scholarship and global intellectual history, e.g. Enlightenment Underground. Radical Germany 1680–1720 (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Knowledge Lost. A New View of Early Modern Intellectual History (Princeton University Press, 2022) and Überreichweiten. Perspektiven einer Globalen Ideengeschichte (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2022).
Lauri Ockenström
PhD, is currently working as a university researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His research focuses on image magic and visual symbols in medieval and early modern culture. He received his doctorate in Art History in 2014 from the University of Jyväskylä. His post-doctoral project (imafor 2016–2019) focused on magical imageries transmitted in Latin manuals between 1100–1600. Since 2016, Ockenström has been leading a group translating and providing a commentary on Vitruvius’ De architectura.
received his PhD degree in Medical Humanities from the University of Insubria (Varese) in 2019. His research project focused on the life and work of the Italian psychoanalyst Emilio Servadio (1904–1995). He collaborates with the chairs of Political Theory and Sociology of Political Processes at the University of Insubria. His interests include new religious movements, the connection between religions and the media, the analysis of political myths, neo-Gnosticism and techno-Gnosticism, historico-ideological and political interactions of the notions of the sacred, power, and eros. He edits the peer-reviewed, online journal La Rosa di Paracelso. He serves as secretary and annual conference organizator of fsa Gaetano Massa.
Muriel Pécastaing-Boissière
PhD, is Senior Lecturer in British Civilisation (Victorian studies) at the English Department of Sorbonne University. She is the author of Les Actrices victoriennes, entre marginalité et conformisme (L’Harmattan, 2004), based on her doctoral dissertation on the social status of Victorian actresses. She is currently researching the links between the late-Victorian socialist movement, the contemporaneous fight for women’s rights, and the spiritual and occult revival. Her biography Annie Besant (1847–1933): Struggles and Quest was published in London in 2017.
Tim Rudbøg
PhD (Exon.), is Associate Professor and Director of the Copenhagen Centre for the Study of Theosophy and Esotericism (ccste) at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. As a professional historian of religions, Rudbøg has taught many university courses and published widely on an array of topics, but he has primarily specialized in the study of esotericism, Helena P. Blavatsky and The Theosophical Society. More recent publications include the two co-edited volumes Imagining the East: The Early Theosophical Society (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Innovation in Esotericism from the Renaissance to the Present (Palgrave, 2021).