The Medieval Masterclass for Creators has now become a glorious part of history. 

Thank-you to the dozens of amazing fiction creators who shared their stories and their love of the Middle Ages with us!

Please have one last look at our amazing skilled instructors and follow them on their new adventures.

Lead Instructor

Danièle Cybulskie

Writer, professor, TEDx speaker, and podcaster, Danièle has been making the Middle Ages fun, entertaining, and accessible for over a decade. She is the author of Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction, The Five-Minute Medievalist, and the forthcoming How to Live Like a Monk: Medieval Wisdom for Modern Life. Danièle is also the creator and host of The Medieval Podcast, a weekly show on which she interviews experts on the Middle Ages about a wide variety of topics. Her writing, videos, and podcast have been used as resources in elementary schools, secondary schools, and universities across North America. When she’s not reading, writing, or recording, Danièle can be found drinking tea, doing Krav Maga, or sometimes building a backyard trebuchet.

Find Danièle at danielecybulskie.com

Featured Experts

Fencing Master

Ken Mondschein

Ken is a highly qualified authority on classical and historical fencing (holding the credential of Maître d'Armes Historique from the United States Fencing Coaches Association) and modern fencing instructor (Prévôt in foil and épée). He has a quarter-century of experience, and has lectured and published widely, as well as taught at institutions such as the Higgins Armory Museum. His aim is, as Burt S. Hall wrote in his review of Ken's translation of Camillo Agrippa's 1553 Trattato di Scienza d'Arme, "demystifying all Renaissance fencing treatises and enhancing their standing as texts." In addition to his academic work, Ken currently teaches privately as the lead instructor of Massachusetts Historical Swordsmanship.

Neil Buttery

Neil Buttery has been studying and writing about the history of British food for over a decade. His academic career began in the sciences, focussing upon the evolution of social behaviour, eventually segueing into the social history of his favourite thing: food. He is also an experienced chef and restauranteur, recreating historical and traditional foods; a believer that it is our senses of smell and taste that can transport our imaginations to the past most efficiently. This combination of academic study and practical cookery has led to appearances on Channel Four’s Britain’s Most Historic Towns, BBC Two’s Monkman & Seagull’s Genius Guide to Great Britain and Radio Four’s The Food Programme. His research and writing on the subject can be read on his long-running blogs British Food: A History and Neil Cooks Grigson, and heard on the British Food History Podcast. Most recently he completed his first book, A Dark History of Sugar, for publishing house Pen & Sword History.

Blacksmith

Thomas B. Timbrell

While obtaining his history degree at the University of Leicester, Tom decided that office work was not for him and gave blacksmithing a try (naturally). Both during and since his time studying Blacksmithing and Metalworking at Warwick College, Tom has provided demonstrations at Mary Arden's Farm in Stratford-Upon Avon and across the UK, showing the life and craft of blacksmiths from the Early Iron Age to the Victorian Era. In his private blacksmithing business, Tom continues to make both modern and historical knives, as well as other weapons based on the measurements and style of archaeological finds. He also does artistic work and just about anything else - as long as it's not horseshoes.

Find Ken Mondschein at kenmondschein.com

Find Neil Buttery at British Food: A History

Find Thomas Timbrell at Big Beynon's Blacksmithing

Textile Archaeologist

Katrin Kania

Dr. Katrin Kania is a textile archaeologist with a strong crafts focus. Upon seeing a historical textile, she instantly wants to figure out how it was made - and consequently she has researched a number of textile techniques and processes, from spinning to gold embroidery. She wrote her PhD about the cut and construction of medieval garments, has designed and run a spinning experiment, and organises the European Textile Forum, a conference designed to connect crafters and researchers. Katrin is also teaching various textile crafts, does reconstruction work for museums and offers hard to find tools and materials for historical textile techniques in her online shop. Together with Dr. Gillian Polack, she has authored "The Middle Ages Unlocked", and has also written an instruction book about gold embroidery.

Food Historian

Beth Rogers

Beth Rogers is an instructor and PhD student at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iceland, studying food history and medieval Icelandic culture. With an MA in Medieval Icelandic Studies and an MA.Ed in secondary education, Beth has taught various subjects in Asia, the US and Iceland, including the first MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for the University of Iceland, called Medieval Icelandic Sagas. She has written more than 30 popular and academic articles on such varied topics as Viking dairy culture, salt in the Viking Age and medieval period, food in the Russian Primary Chronicle and the literary structure of Völsunga saga. She was also a historical consultant for an episode of the BBC Channel 4 show Food Unwrapped featuring Icelandic spirits in 2019. Beth's other research interests include: medieval literature (especially sagas), military history, emotions in literature, Old Norse mythology and folklore, and cultural memory.

Bibliographer

Peter Konieczny

Along with being a co-founder and c​ontributor at​ Medievalists.net, Peter is the ​editor of Medieval​ Warfare​ Magazine, and the web admin at De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History. He has been working to spread knowledge about the Middle Ages online for over 15 years. Peter lives near Toronto, Canada, and enjoys all the books publishers send to him. When he is not reading about medieval history, you can find him trying to keep up with his son in Minecraft.

Find Katrin Kania at pallia.net

Find Beth Rogers at academia.edu

Find Peter Konieczny at Medievalists.net