Presenters

Mariana López R.

Mariana Lopez is a founder and head coach of the Metropolitan Historical Fencing Academy (MHFA) and has 15 years of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) experience. A highly accomplished competitor with various gold medals amongst a number of weapons she’s also a tournament organizer and referee in both North America and Europe, and a former member of the Mexican National HEMA Championships committee. Having a strong passion for art she has also partaken in a multitude of art projects related to HEMA, creating reproductions, illustrations for books, fencing manuals restoration, and other visual resources. As an International Relations major Mariana founded Esfinges, an international organization with thousands of members dedicated to the support and promotion of woman’s participation in HEMA.

David Rowe

David Rowe is a founder and head instructor at the Metropolitan Historical Fencing Academy and has more than 20 years of fencing, competing, refereeing, event organization, and coaching experience and is a decorated national and international competitor in a variety of weapons and disciplines. David studied at Catholic University researching the transcription, translation, and interpretation of medieval manuscripts, is a producer of the Into the HEMAverse podcast, and organizer and tournament director for the Capitol Clash and King’s Cup Tournament & Workshops.

Justin Aucoin

Justin Aucoin (aka Remy) is the product of when a five-year-old boy who fell in love with Zorro and The Three Musketeers grows into a mostly functional adult. His life-long love of athletics and swashbuckling has led him down the road to practicing the art of historical fencing.

He’s the founder of Boston Academie d’Armes, a hybrid in-person/online fencing school for HEMA & SCA historical fencers, with a focus on French and Italian rapier, smallsword, and dueling saber. He puts an emphasis on good body mechanics and helping his fencers to improve their physical fitness, athletic ability, and fencing skill while operating within their current physical limitations.

As a competitor, Justin has won numerous rapier tournaments in the SCA — both in singles and in group melee — including Carolingia’s Baronial Champion, East Kingdom Crown Champion, and named 6x to the Pennsic Champs team. He is 15th member of the East Kingdon’s Order of Defense, holds a Silver Broach and Maunche for his historical martial arts research, and a Silver Wheel and Silver Crescent for his coaching.

Outside of the SCA and the Academie, Justin teaches rapier at Athena School of Arms, has taught workshops at events such as Iron Gate Exhibition (IGX) and Lord Baltimore’s Challenge, and is a certified personal trainer through NASM. You can follow his historical martial arts research at https://justinswordfit.com/

Ian Davis

Ian is the wrestling, dagger, and armor instructor with Boston Armizare. He focuses on the works of Fiore dei Liberi and Pietro Monte, as well as later Bolognese fencing. He transitioned to HEMA from and continues to practice Filipino martial arts, and focuses on bringing Fiore into the modern combative context to further understand the historical applications of Armizare.

Veronica Young

Veronica Young has been an active member of HEMA since 2019. Since then, her main focuses have been threefold: Competing, Creating and fostering a better environment for under-represented genders in HEMA, and teaching. Veronica serves as one of the Assistant Instructors at the Atlanta Historical Fencing Academy (AHFA) in Atlanta, GA. She also founded and leads the resource group, called Arc at AHFA, for underrepresented genders to promote good club culture and to provide a focused training environment. She has competed in 6 tournaments overall and most recently won the Gold medal in Women’s Longsword at SERFO 2022 as well as placing 23rd overall in Open Longsword at SERFO 2022.

Camilla Frazier

Camilla is the assistant instructor for MEMAG crossings fight school and founder of the New Jersey Kloppfechters. Cam studies Fiore and Codex Guelf 83.4.

Ian Crowe

Ian has been fencing in one form or another since 2010. He started with Olympic fencing before switching to HEMA. He is also a viking age reenactor with Straumfjordr, correcting the myths that shows like The Vikings insist on perpetuating.

Christian Trosclair

Christian Trosclair is a translator of primary sources of the German Tradition of the Early Modern Period and the Technical director of the Wiktenauer. He teaches and competes at HEMA Events, has an extensive background in martial arts and movement. He has been exploring HEMA since 2005 and has been a member of the HEMAA Governing Council.

Elizabeth Scott

Elizabeth Scott is a HEMA practitioner with particular interest in mounted and armored combat. She is a practicing sports medicine surgeon in Raleigh, NC and also holds a BA in Medieval and Renaissance studies. She brings a background in dance, eastern martial arts, and sports/athletic training to her teaching, allowing her to emphasize training in a biomechanically sound and effective way. When not swinging swords with Boston Armizare or Triangle Sword Guild, she trains her horse, Lance, in mounted combat and classical dressage.

Stephen Cheney

Stephen Cheney is the instructor at Bucks Historical Longsword in Bucks County, PA, a club which focuses on the RDL long sword tradition. He has translated several early KdF related texts, some of which are featured on Wiktenauer. In addition to HEMA, he also has experience in Modern Olympic Fencing (épée and sabre), kendo (4th dan, AUSKF), and judo (4th kyu, USJA). He was an active competitor in the Northeast USA longsword tournament scene. His current focus is the constraints-led approach to coaching, game design, and their application in teaching the long sword of the RDL tradition.

Jeff Tsay

Jeff Tsay is currently Director of Forte Swordplay, a group based in Boston, Massachusetts devoted to the study of HEMA and actively training the German tradition of Kunst des Fechtens (KdF). Jeff has an eclectic martial background, having studied wing chun and several other unarmed and armed Eastern arts before finally succumbing to the hidden mysteries of the Western traditions. In his spare time, Jeff’s efforts have focused on refining his interpretation methodology and using it to analyze both greater- (e.g. “Krump“) and lesser-understood (e.g. “Rose“, “Aussere Mynn“) KdF techniques, putting them to the test in national and international tournaments (e.g. Swordfish, Longpoint, and Fechtschule America), and pushing the bounds of using video as an effective medium for sharing HEMA research — efforts that have led to 3 major US HEMA Series Livestreams in 2013. Every fall, Jeff also helps host the Iron Gate Exhibition (IGX), one of the premier HEMA/WMA conferences in the US. In the remainder of his very full life, Jeff is a professional solution architect, a devoted husband, and dedicated father of 2 awesome boys. To find out more about Jeff’s efforts, check out www.forteswordplay.com.

Patrick McCaffrey

Patrick is the instructor for L’Arte Reading. He has been training for over 7 years with L.A.D. Historical Fencing. He has been interpreting the words and pictures of Fiore’s works into martial action. He uses modern and traditional approaches to teach basics and conditioning for the physically strenuous arts of close combat. He regularly holds extended 12 hour classes to teach the entirety of Fiore’s Dagger Material.

Kiana Shurkin

Kiana Shurkin is an internationally recognized competitor and instructor of martial arts who has traveled extensively to train, teach, and compete. A lifelong student, she has sought continually to expand her understanding of martial arts through exposure to a variety of styles ranging from Tae Kwon Do to MMA to stage combat. Before beginning her HEMA training in 2010 under Jake Norwood, her love of swords led her to co-found and captain her high school fencing club. She enjoys sharing her passion with others and hopes to contribute something of value to the journey of each person who attends her workshops.

Timothy Walsh

Timothy is what happens when someone grows up reading swashbucklers and fantasy books, watching movies with swords, and then falls into the SCA. He has been fencing there for 20 years, focusing primarily on Italian rapier via the good word of Fabris. He also enjoys the remainder of the Italian rapier trinity as well as Destreza, Bolognese, daggers, and whatever other oddball weapons someone walks up to him with.

DJ Nero

DJ Nero has been studying HEMA proper since 2011 but has always had a fascination with swords and blades, slaying his first “monster” as a child with a stick of some sort. His parent club is Sword to Sword in Houston, but he was also formally adopted through blood, might and glory into Nachreisen (Formerly known as Ordo HEMA). He is a proud member of SHFL (Southern Historical Fencing League), a non-profit association with multiple clubs throughout the South. Outside of HEMA, DJ has nearly 30 years of martial arts experience, having dabbled at some level from Judo, Taekwondo, Karate and other Eastern arts. He is primarily an IT Admin, web developer &/or code scripter by trade during the day and a professional DJ by night. Throughout the HEMA-sphere he is known as “The King of Hugs” which if you meet him, you will nearly immediately understand why.

Jeremy Steflik

Jeremy has been studying HEMA since 2006 at WSTR and has been a lead instructor at the club since 2011. His background in classical and sport fencing – starting in 1997 as a competitor and later a coach at the University of Rochester and Weslyan University clubs – heavily influences the training pedagogy at WSTR. Training techniques in context is stressed, so that students learn both how to DO the technique and how to USE the techniques tactically in a fight. For the past several years, Jeremy has been researching the fencing systems taught by the Berliner Turnschule in the early 19th century and has translated and published several manuals.

Rebecca Glass

Rebecca has been training HEMA since 2014 and competing since 2015. She has been to events across the United States as competitor, judge/director, and instructor. She has judged at numerous events and directed at events including SoCal, IGX, Clash of Claymores/PA HEMA Open, Flowerpoint, and AGO. She has taught Brain Games at Krump Pow, IGX, SoCal, AGO and a modified version at Swordsquatch.

John Morahn

John has been studying longsword since 2006 at Western Swordsmanship Technique and Research, after seeing them demo in a 4th of July parade. As a kid, he had always played with sticks, and was intrigued by the idea of learning that art more seriously. The opportunity to study two blocks from his house was too good to pass up, and he moved up quickly from student to teacher within the school, starting teaching in 2011. As a teacher, John most enjoys imparting the nuances and techniques of German longsword skills. He is skilled at helping his students understand the finer mechanics of strong fundamentals in order to make them more effective. Having studied German translation in college, he brings his direct translation skills and knowledge of fighting techniques to old texts in order to make them accessible to his students. When he’s not teaching, John also enjoys playing with polearms, peasant weapons, saber, fishing poles, woodworking, and gardens.

Mike O’Brien

Mike has been one of the head instructors at Boston Armizare since 2017. His focus within HEMA is the exploration of various Italian master. His initial exploration of HEMA was with Fiore’s art of combat but has expanded over the years into both the Bolognese tradition and the northern Italian rapier.

Timothy Walsh

Timothy is what happens when someone grows up reading swashbucklers and fantasy books, watching movies with swords, and then falls into the SCA. He has been fencing there for 20 years, focusing primarily on Italian rapier via the good word of Fabris. He also enjoys the remainder of the Italian rapier trinity as well as Destreza, Bolognese, daggers, and whatever other oddball weapons someone walks up to him with.

Don Kindsvatter
Blake Johnson
John O’Connor

John O’Connor, Blake Johnson, and Don Kindsvatter have been working with the staff over the past few years focusing on the European source material but supplementing it with Asian sources for drills and coordination exercises.

Michael Chidester

Michael Chidester is the Editor-in-Chief of Wiktenauer and, as Director of the Wiktenauer, an officer of the HEMA Alliance. He has been studying historical European martial arts since 2001, and has been leading Wiktenauer since 2011. In 2019, he started a publishing company called HEMA Bookshelf which produces precise replicas of historical fencing books and manuscripts. Michael is a Research Scholar of the Meyer Freifechter Guild, a founding member of the Society for Historical European Martial Arts Studies, a member of the Western Martial Arts Coalition, and a Lifetime Member of the HEMA Alliance. He has lectured on historical martial arts across North America and Europe and has written several books. He currently trains at Athena School of Arms in Cambridge, MA.