Contributors

Walter Barta is a graduate student and special projects grant‐holder at the University of Houston. Lately he has been researching witcherbility studies in the department of monstro‐biology. In his free time he is a philosopher‐for‐hire, wandering the world, searching for and fighting off the many errors, falsehoods, fallacies, misunderstandings, and other monstrosities that plague popular culture. Please remember to “toss a coin to your philosopher.”

Matthew Brake is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Virginia Community College. He is also the series editor for the Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture series from Fortress Academic. As the co‐editor of this book, he would like to thank all of you who have bought it. Please tell your friends to buy it, too, so that they can also “toss a coin to your witcher [volume editor].”

Gerald Browning is an Instructor of English and Self‐Defense at Grand Valley State University. He also teaches English at Muskegon Community College. However, when he isn't tipping a coin to his local witcher, he is training in martial arts and buying tickets to Jaskier concerts. Much like Jaskier, Gerald is a published storyteller. His novel, Demon in My Head, is his only horror novel, and he has contributed to other Popular Culture and Philosophy publications.

Yael Cameron is a Senior Lecturer at Auckland University of Technology and on Tuesday evenings occasionally dresses as a Vengerbergian acolyte. Her research is interdisciplinary, crossing between continental philosophy, religion, and occasional chaotic forays into forbidden fire magic. While she doesn’t have superhuman senses, she does make up for this by being inhumanly beautiful and publishes widely in this guise on mythology and its relation to contemporary literature and film. So there’s that talent in her bag of forgotten bones, and like horses, whores, and mages, a talent that’s only useful ‘til it’s not.

Like a rambling minstrel, Matthew Crippen is a wandering professor who has plied his trade on four continents, taking up other jobs as well, such as performing music, coaching gymnastics, and sword (machete) work on tree farms. His publications parallel the hybrid monstrosities in The Witcher. They mix cognitive science, history of Western and non‐Western philosophy, environmental philosophy, ethics, politics, aesthetics, and philosophy of technology and science, also discussing other stuff like the intelligence of slime mold or gut bacteria influencing our brains.

Kevin S. Decker is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Washington University and does odd jobs around the college like burying bodies and wrangling alligators. He is the editor or co‐editor of 15 books in philosophy and popular culture, most recently Dune and Philosophy and Star Wars and Philosophy Strikes Back (with Jason T. Eberl), and the author of Who is Who? The Philosophy of Doctor Who. He giggles every time he hears the name “Mousesack.”

Paul Giladi is a Lecturer in Philosophy at SOAS University of London. One of Paul's areas of research and teaching expertise is critical social theory, specifically topics at the intersection of the literature on epistemic injustice and on recognition theory. If Paul were a mage in the Witcherverse, he would probably be deemed too “woke” by the likes of Stregobor. Paul also tends to giggle inanely whenever he hears the word “Ragamuffin”—c’mon, you know why …

In the realm of academia, Corey R. Horn roams the halls of Tulane University as a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy. A sorcerer specializing in the intricate dance of international relations and human rights, Corey’s work seeks to push the realms closer together, toward a more just and prosperous world. When Corey isn’t writing as fast as Geralt wields his sword, you can find him in a coffee shop, consuming caffeine potions—forever fueling intellectual conquests.

John P. Irish is an educator and independent researcher specializing in the works of John Locke and John Adams. He has earned master’s degrees in Philosophy and Humanities, with a Doctorate in Humanities from Southern Methodist University. He wrote his dissertation on the intriguing and lesser‐known mid‐nineteenth‐century Irish American speculative fiction writer Fitz‐James O’Brien, often called the “Irish Poe.” He is currently editing a three‐volume collection of O’Brien’s weird tales in collaboration with Swan River Press. Contributing regularly to the magazine Philosophy Now: A Magazine of Ideas, he also published an article in the edited volume Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy: Psychohistory and Its Discontents. An interesting facet of his teaching philosophy is his belief that literature only becomes truly captivating when vampires appear, which explains his immediate fascination with The Witcher. Residing in Bridgeport, Texas, he shares a lakeside home with his wife Elizabeth and their five children: Tom, Annie, Teddy, Lucy, and Holly—otherwise known as their pets.

Ceádmil! Andriy Ivanchenko is originally from the Eastern city of Kharkiv in Ukraine, where he is currently residing having spent 20 or so years abroad. He got his master’s degree in English and Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge, then wrote a doctoral dissertation discussing some ways linguistic methods can be applied to interpreting literary (more specifically, dramatic) conversation. Afterwards, he spent some years teaching academic English in Japan, including a well‐beloved seminar on cultural and linguistic aspects of fantasy literature and fantasy magic in particular. His appreciation of all things Witcher goes back many years—in fact, quite a while before the very first Witcher game was unleashed upon the world. He’s currently gearing up to study other linguistic aspects of the Witcherverse, but let that remain a mystery for now, nell’ea?

Steven Kammerer is a writer, director, composer, and independent scholar of the encounters between East and West down through the ages, from Herodotus to Heidegger. His master’s degree in German Studies is from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, while doctoral studies at Queen’s and Simon Fraser University helped launch him on stints of archive research in Germany and Egypt. Since then he’s led a fairly Witcheresque life of high adventure. During the “Arab Spring,” he covered the million‐strong demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Cairo, while his trips up and down the Nile saw him sometimes as the lone tourist in an ancient temple, village, or oasis. He put in three seasons of mineral exploration in the mountains of northeastern Yukon Territory, where he had many—all too many!—encounters with bears, bees, thick clouds of mosquitoes, and once or twice saw what he could have sworn was a leshen. A season as deck‐hand on a salmon trawler in the rough waters off the craggy shores of the Alaskan panhandle (very Skellige!) seasoned him into something of a sailor. Among other film projects, he’s the award‐winning writer‐director of Ada (2019), a biopic of Countess Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and the world’s first computer programmer. His moody piano compositions can be found on Spotify.

Graham Lee has undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy, which he appreciates is only slightly more relatable than having gone to mage school. He is newer to The Witcher than many of his colleagues, admittedly having been introduced to it through the television series (shame, shame). While it took him to the fourth episode to understand there were different timelines (and still longer to understand that the guard was more breaking the fourth wall than busting Jaskier's balls), it only took him to the fourth page of Blood of Elves to understand that the books aren't as confusing.

Wulf Loh is Assistant Professor at the University of Tübingen, Germany, where he leads a small research group on the ethics of AI and robotics. When he is not boring his students with questions of algorithmic bias and discrimination, he still loves to go chasing after Ciri or explore the Skellige Isles on his PS4.

Victoria Lyle is a senior undergraduate completing degrees in English and in Religion/Philosophy. Much like those studying at the temple of Melitele, Victoria spends her time reading, studying, and trying to avoid the strife of life. Finishing up her undergraduate studies isn’t quite as intense as undergoing the Trial of Grasses, but she may emerge as an entirely different creature in the end.

Tim Miechels is a PhD student and lecturer at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He mainly teaches courses in the field of metaphysics and philosophical anthropology and is writing a dissertation on the concept of “naturalism” in the works of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. He once aspired to become a witcher in the School of the Bear, but his constitution makes him unfit for any practical activity whatsoever.

Raised in the southern kingdom of Darwen, Fortunio Fang served the Serpent Clan as a formidable spearman. But after Merwyn’s coup, Fortunio Fang fled to the forests, living as a spear‐for‐hire until the Conjunction of the Spheres thrust him to a place...