Jonathan Barry is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Exeter, UK, and currently a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator for his project, 'The Medical World of Early Modern England, Ireland and Wales c.1500-1715'.


Owen Davies is Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. Together with Jonathan Barry and Willem de Blécourt, he edits the Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic series.


Cornelie Usborne is Professor Emerita of History at Roehampton University, UK, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. She has shared her life with Willem de Blécourt, and thus with witchcraft studies, for many years.

Provides a methodological and conceptual agenda for the study of cultures of witchcraft in Europe since the Middle Ages
Applies themes and approaches pioneered by Willem de Blécourt to cases from the thirteenth century to modern day
Offers contributions from a range of historians, anthropologists, literary scholars and folklorists

Introduction; Jonathan Barry, Owen Davies and Cornelie Usborne.- Contested Knowledge: The Historical Anthropologist's Approach to European Witchcraft; Willem de Blécourt.- Witches and Devil's Magic in Austrian Demonological Legends; Christa Agnes Tuczay.- Hanna Dyâb's Witch and the Great Witch Switch; Ruth Bottigheimer.- The Mirror of the Witches (1600). A German tragedy in context; Rita Voltmer.- Unravelling the Myth and Histories of the Weighing Test at Oudewater: the case of Leentje Williams; Machteld Löwensteyn.- The North Sea as a Crossroads of Witchcraft Beliefs: the limited importance of political boundaries; Hans de Waardt.- "Kind in words and deeds, but false in their hearts". Fear of evil conspiracy in late sixteenth-century Denmark; Louise Nyholm Kallestrup.- "Ein gefehrlich Ding, darin leichtlich zuviel geschieht" (A dangerous thing in which too much happens easily): The end of village witch-trials in the Saar region; Eva Labouvie.- News from the Invisible World: the publishing history of tales of the supernatural c.1660-1832; Jonathan Barry.- Researching Reverse-Witch Trials in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England; Owen Davies.- The Catechism of Witch Lore in Twentieth-Century Denmark; Gustav Henningsen.- Magic and Counter-Magic in Twenty-First-Century Bosnia; Mirjam Mencej.- Index.