Personnel

Dr. Jeffrey L. Forgeng is one of only a handful of professional scholars in the world specializing in the history of European martial arts, a field in which he has been involved since 1990. His books include Joachim Meyer’s Art of Combat (2004) and The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship: A Facsimile and Translation of Europe’s Oldest Personal Combat Treatise, Royal Armouries MS I.33 (2003); forthcoming are Hans Lecküchner’s Art of Falchion Combat: A German Martial Arts Treatise of 1482, Paulus Hector Mair’s Treatise on the Martial Arts (c. 1555); and Pedro Monte’s Collectanea. Dr. Forgeng is the Paul S. Morgan Curator at the Higgins Armory Museum, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Mr. Mark Millman is a long-time student of the martial arts. He has fenced for over twenty years and has studied Shotokan and Kyo Kushinkai karate and Kodokan judo. He has coached fencing at the high-school level, and has given private lessons. He is a former member of the Society of American Fight Directors, and has choreographed fights for over sixty productions. He took his degree at Harvard, where he studied social anthropology as viewed through material culture. He has a particular interest in the sword; his collection numbers over fifty items.

Dr. Ken Mondschein brings both academic and practical expertise to the study of the sword. He teaches classical and historical fencing both here at the Higgins Armory Museum and at the Pioneer Valley Fencing Academy in Easthampton, MA, and has over a dozen years’ experience in traditional and reconstructed forms of Western martial arts. He has also translated Camillo Agrippa's Treatise of the Science of Arms (forthcoming from Italica Press), is a 2009 Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, was a 2007–2008 Fulbright scholar to France, and received his Ph.D. in History from Fordham University in 2010. He is also the editor of the Swordmaster, the United States Fencing Coaches' Association journal, and writes on historical and political subjects for the popular press, having had work appear on Nerve.com, and in New York Press and Renaissance magazine, among other venues. Ken's forthcoming projects include earning AAI moniteur certification and translations of Alfieri's longsword (1640) and of the Paris MS of Fiore dei Liberi that he discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale. In his spare time, he can usually be found on horseback.

Dr. William R. Short is an independent scholar and author, specializing in medieval Icelandic literature and Viking-age topics. At Higgins Armory Museum, he has been researching Viking weapons and their use, and his research results were recently published in the book Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques. He demonstrates and teaches Viking-age combat techniques and regularly lectures on Viking-age topics at museums, universities, and schools in North America and in Iceland. His most recent book, Icelanders in the Viking Age: The People of the Sagas was released March, 2010 and discusses the culture, society, and history of saga-age Icelanders.