Leo Ruickbie is an historian and sociologist of magic, witchcraft and Wicca. He is the author of several books, beginning with Witchcraft Out of the Shadows, a 2004 publication outlining the history of witchcraft from ancient Greece until the modern day. Ruickbie was born in Scotland and took a Master's degree in Sociology and Religion at the University of Lancaster. He then studied at King's College London and was an awarded a PhD for his thesis entitled The Re-Enchanters: Theorising Re-Enchantment and Testing for its Presence in Modern Witchcraft. On Samhain 2007 he launched Open Source Wicca, a project inspired by the Open Source software movement aimed at making the founding texts of Wicca more readily available by releasing them under a Creative Commons licence. In 2008 and 2009 he exhibited on the subject of witchcraft in France.