Richard Raiswell (born January 1966) is an

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

University of Prince Edward Island The University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) is a public university in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, and the only university in the province. Founded in 1969, the enabling legislation is the ''University Act, R.S.P.E.I 2000.'' ...

, Canada, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Graduate Studies,

University of New Brunswick The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is a public university with two primary campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. It is the oldest English-language university in Canada, and among the oldest public universities in North Ameri ...

, Fredericton. He teaches classes on medieval and Renaissance History, as well as the History of Ideas, specialising, in particular, on premodern geography and exploration, and the antecedents of the Scientific Revolution. Raiswell was born in

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

, in the UK, immigrating to Canada in 1979. His education includes a B.A. in History from

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning Wo ...

(1992), with an M.A. in Medieval Studies (1995), and a Ph.D. in History both from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

(2003). His recent works include peer-reviewed articles on medieval geographical cognition, the sixteenth-century German Hebraist, Joannes Boemus, and several works on aspects of premodern European demon possession. He is the co-editor of two collections of academic essays. ''Shell Games: Studies in Frauds, Scams and Deceit in Early Modern Culture, 1300-1650'' with Mark Crane and Margaret Reeves (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2004) and ''The Devil in Society in Premodern Europe'' (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012) with

Peter Dendle Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and s ...

(Penn State Mont Alto). He is one of the founders of the journal ''Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies of the Preternatural'' (with Kirsten Uszkalo) and now serves as its book review editor. He has been the editor of the Ficino listserv, dedicated to the discussion of Renaissance European history, literature and culture since 1999, and was an adviser on the Witches in Early Modern England Project (2009–2011). Raiswell is a frequent contributor to CBC Radio, with a regular column on provincial politics on CBC Prince Edward Island's ''Mainstreet'', and occasional spots o
Island Morning
where he discusses aspects of premodern magic, demonology and the occult. He has also appeared in the Smithsonian Network's ''Treasures Decoded'', in which he argued against the authenticity of the

Vinland Map The Vinland Map was claimed to be a 15th-century mappa mundi with unique information about Norse exploration of North America but is now known to be a 20th-century forgery. The map first came to light in 1957 and was acquired by Yale University. ...

. He is a cricket enthusiast, and has published a popular article on the history of cricket on Prince Edward Island in the nineteenth century.

Selected publications

*Richard Raiswell with Peter Dendle *Richard Raiswell with Mark Crane and Margaret Reeves * Contributor to "The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery", 1997,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Raiswell, Richard 20th-century Canadian historians Canadian male non-fiction writers Living people 1966 births Academic staff of the University of Prince Edward Island 21st-century Canadian historians