Richard C. Burke is an English professor at Lynchburg College in Virginia and spoke at Nimbus 2003: A Harry Potter Symposium on “Lord Voldemort’s Gift for Spreading Discord & Enmity: The Rise of Evil in Harry Potter.”

Lana A. Whited is professor of English and journalism at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Va., and editor of The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon (University of Missouri, 2002). She co-authored a chapter on moral issues.

Peter Appelbaum, an associate professor of education at Arcadia University in Glenside, Pa., wrote the chapter “Magic, Technoculture, and Becoming Human” for Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives (Routledge; 2003).

David Baggett, professor of philosophy at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., co-edited Harry Potter and Philosophy.

W. Christopher Stewart works at Templeton Religion Trust as its Vice President of Grant Programs.He is on leave of absence from teaching philosophy at Houghton College in Houghton, N.Y., and co-authored, with Houghton colleague Ben Lipscomb, a chapter for Harry Potter and Philosophy. 

The Rev. Francis Bridger is dean of the Diocese of Brechin in Scotland. He was formerly ecclesiastical professor of Anglican studies and executive director of the Center for Anglican Communion Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He is the author of A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld.

Robert L. Brown is a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written about Buddhism, asceticism, health and the body.

Jill Dubisch is a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She has written about religious aspects of the health food movement in a journal about magic, witchcraft and the supernatural.

Mark Roehling is an assistant professor of labor and industrial relations at Michigan State University in Lansing. In 1999 he published a study that found that overweight and obese people were discriminated against – often openly – in the workplace.