About
Jherek Swanger
I was born in 1971 in the USA, and have been practicing, studying, and/or teaching various forms of modern and historical fencing since 1986. Since 1999 I have focused on Italian swordplay of the 16th through early 17th centuries, from 2010 to 2017 studied the use of the French small sword, and from 2002 to 2020 studied and intermittently taught "Bolognese swordsmanship". I was corecipient of the 2013 HEMA Scholar Award for “Best Researcher”. I hold an MS in Biochemistry, and work as a senior research technician and lab manager in cell division / cancer research. My approach to interpreting historical treatises is to apply the same degree of intellectual rigor that I bring to scientific research, coupling systematic textual analysis with practical experimentation. My goal is to produce translations that are as semantically equivalent as possible to the original texts, as well as being readily understandable, in proper modern English.