Christoph Sander

I have studied philosophy at University of Freiburg (B.A., 2011) and Humboldt University of Berlin (M.A., 2013). In 2019, I received my Ph.D. from the Technische Universität Berlin with a thesis on the conceptions of magnetism in the early-modern period.

I have a strong commitment to the Digital Humanities, and currently hold a professorship for Digital Humanities in Religious Studies at Ruhr University Bochum.

I am the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant SCIGMA (101164040).

Between 2019 and 2022, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (Max Planck Institute for Art History), within the research group Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions, led by Sietske Fransen. In my project, I investigate the production, typology and use of diagrams in early modern science. Between 2022 and 2023, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Currently, I work as knowledge engineer at the German Historical Institute in Rome within the Project GRACEFUL17.

Beyond my research related to magnetism and diagrams, I have published on the history of early-modern Jesuit philosophy, particularly the idea and practice of censorship in Jesuit colleges.

You can download my full CV and list of publications.

See also my ORCiD.

Publications

Online

Book

Edited Volume

Articles

published

1. Terra AB: Descartes’s Imagery on Magnetism and Its Legacy. In Cartesian Imagery. Picturing Philosophy in the Early Modern Age, edited by Mattia Mantovani and Davide Cellamare, 205–238. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2026. (Open Access)
2. What’s the Matter with this Compass? Magnetic Declination as Anomaly in Early Modern Instruments and Thought. In Transforming Philosophy: Late Medieval Knowledge in Transition, edited by Karsten Engel and Ueli Zahnd, 267–290. Berlin: Schwabe Verlag, 2026. (Open Access)
3. (with Naomi Beutler, Filippo Sarra, Valentino Verdone, Andrea Cicerchia, Bruno Boute, and Jörg Hörnschemeyer) GRACEFUL17. A Knowledge Graph for Papal Documents of Apostolic Provisions. Die Zeitschrift für digitale Geisteswissenschaften, 10 (2025). (Open Access)
4. Least Attractive? Aristotelian Presuppositions to Explain Magnetic Movements. Aristotelica, 7 (2025): 89–125. (Open Access)
5. Traces of Attention: A Computational Approach to the Study of Readers’ Marks in Early-Modern Printed Books. In Thinking in the Margins: Marginalia in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Mario Meliadò, 425–460. Cultures and Practices of Knowledge in History 20. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2026. (Open Access)
6. Minimal Computing and Weak AI for Historical Research: The Case of Early Modern Church Administration. Histories 5, no. 4 (2025): 59. (Open Access)
7. (with Jörg Hörnschemeyer) GRACEFUL17: A Scalable Digital Fast-Track Strategy: Mining, Modelling, and Mastering Early Modern Church Administration Data. ADHO Digital Humanities Conference 2025 (DH2025, Lisbon). (Open Access)
8. (with Hassan el-Hajj and Alessandro Adamou) Magnetic Margins. A Census and Reader Annotations Database. ADHO Digital Humanities Conference 2023 (DH2023, Graz). (Open Access)
9. Tempering Occult Qualities. Magnetism and complexio in Early Modern Medical Thought. Early Science and Medicine 25, no. 3-5 (2023): 573–596.
10. Magnetism in an Aristotelian World (1550-1700). In Aristoteles und die Naturphilosophie an den mitteleuropäischen Universitäten der Frühen Neuzeit, 1600-1700, edited by Bernd Roling, Sinem Kılıç, and Benjamin Wallura, 69–105. Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 175. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023.
11. Jesuit Science Revisited: Scope, Usefulness, and Challenges of a Historiographical Label. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 91, no. 182 (2022): 461–493. (Open Access)
12. How to Send a Secret Message from Rome to Paris in the Early Modern Period: Telegraphy between Magnetism, Sympathy, and Charlatanry. Early Science and Medicine 27, no. 5 (2022): 426–459. (Open Access)
13. Teaching Magnetism in a Cartesian World, 1650-1700. In Descartes in the Classroom: Teaching Cartesian Philosophy in the Early Modern Age, edited by Davide Cellamare and Mattia Mantovani, 313–342. Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science 35. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2022. (Open Access)
14. Rendering Magnetism Visible. Diagrams and Experiments between 1300 and 1700. Centaurus 64, no. 2 (2022): 315–359. (Open Access)
15. Der Magnetstein in geologischen Theorien der Vormoderne. Der Anschnitt 74, no. 2-3 (2022): 98–108..
16. Paratexts, Printers, and Publishers: Book Production in Social Context. In Publishing Sacrobosco’s De sphaera in Early Modern Europe: Modes of Material and Scientific Exchange, edited by Matteo Valleriani and Andrea Ottone, 337–367. Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. (Open Access)
17. Nutrition and Magnetism. An Ancient Idea Fleshed out in Early Modern Natural Philosophy, Medicine and Alchemy. In Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism, edited by Roberto Lo Presti and Georgia-Maria Korobili, 285–318. Topics in Ancient Philosophy. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021.
18. Die Außengrenzen des menschlichen Körpers. Das Wesen von Blut und Haaren in scholastischen Debatten der Frühen Neuzeit. In De homine. Anthropologien in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Sascha Salatowsky and Wilhelm Schmidt‐Biggemann, 181-215. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2021.
19. Magnetism for Librarians. Leone Allacci’s De magnete (1625) and Its Relation to Giulio Cesare LaGalla’s Disputatio de sympathia et antipathia (1623). Erudition and the Republic of Letters 5, no. 3 (2020): 274–307. (Open Access)
20. (with Matteo Valleriani, Florian Kräutli, Maryam Zamani, Alejandro Tejedor, Malte Vogl, Sabine Bertram, Gesa Funke, and Holger Kantz) The Emergence of Epistemic Communities in the Sphaera Corpus. Journal of Historical Network Research 3, no. 1 (2019): 50–91. (Open Access)
21. Magnets and Garlic. An Enduring Antipathy in Early-Modern Science. Intellectual History Review 30, no. 4 (2020): 523–560. (Open Access)
22. Uniformitas et soliditas doctrinae. History, Topics and Impact of Jesuit Censorship in Philosophy (1550-1599). In Jesuit Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity, edited by Cristiano Casalini, 34–71. Jesuit Studies 20. Leiden; Boston : Brill, 2019.
23. Johannes de Sacrobosco und die Sphaera-Tradition in der katholischen Zensur der Frühen Neuzeit. NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 26, no. 4 (2018): 437–474. (Open Access)
24. Alfonso Salmerón über weltliche Wissenschaften im Dienste der Bibelexegese. In ‚Omne verum vero consonat’. Das Prinzip der Einheit der Wahrheit zwischen 5. Laterankonzil (1512‐1517) und Wissenschaftlicher Revolution. Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 64, no. 2 (2017): 344-360. Quellentexte
25. Magnetism. In Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Marco Sgarbi. Dordrecht: Springer, 2018.
26. Magnetismus und Theamedismus. Eine Fallstudie zur Kenntnis der magnetischen Abstoßung in der Naturkunde der Frühen Neuzeit. Sudhoffs Archiv 101, no. 1 (2017): 42–72.
27. (with Cristiano Casalini) Benet Perera’s Pious Humanism. Aristotelianism, Philology, and Education in Jesuit Colleges. An Edition of Perera's Documenta quaedam perutilia. In History of Universities, edited by Mordechai Feingold, 30,1:1–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
28. For Christ’s Sake: Pious Notions of the Human and Animal Body in Early Jesuit Philosophy and Theology. In Human and Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine, edited by Roberto Lo Presti and Stefanie Buchenau, 55–73. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017. (Open Access)
29. Der Dämon im Text: Lateinische Lesarten von De Somno 453b22 und De Divinatione per Somnum 463b12 zwischen 1150 und 1650. Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 83, no. 2 (2016): 245–311.
30. Early-Modern Magnetism: Uncovering New Textual Links between Leonardo Garzoni SJ (1543–1592), Paolo Sarpi OSM (1552–1623), Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615), and the Accademia Dei Lincei. Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 85, no. 2 (2016): 303–63.
31. In dubio pro fide. The Fifth Council of the Lateran Decree Apostolici Regiminis (1513) and Its Impact on Early Jesuit Education and Pedagogy. Educazione. Giornale di Pedagogia Critica 3, no. 1 (2014): 39–62.
32. Medical Topics in the De Anima Commentary of Coimbra (1598) and the Jesuits’ Attitude towards Medicine in Education and Natural Philosophy. Early Science and Medicine 19, no. 1 (2014): 76–101.
33. The War of the Roses. The Debate between Diego de Ledesma and Benet Perera about the Philosophy Course at the Jesuit College in Rome. Edited by Marco Lamanna and Marco Forlivesi. Quaestio 14 (2014): 31–50.