PD Dr. Bernd-Christian Otto
PD Dr. Bernd-Christian Otto, brief narrative CV (May 2023)
Bernd-Christian Otto studied Religious Studies, Philosophy and Psychology in a M.A.
program and narrowed his focus to Religious Studies while writing his dissertation on the
conceptual history of magic. After gaining his PhD in 2009 (published in 2011 as Magie.
Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit with de
Gruyter), he joined the university of Bergen, Norway, as a visiting research fellow, where he
took part in a book project entitled Defining Magic: A Reader (published 2013 together with
Michael Stausberg). From 2010 to 2014 he coordinated a research project on the
historicisation of religion at the University of Erfurt, from 2014 to 2018 he worked as
postoctoral coordinator of the Center for Advanced Studies Religious Indivualisation in
Historical Perspective at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at
the University of Erfurt. In 2017 he finished his Habilitation treatise entitled Ritual Dynamics
and Rejected Knowledge: A Historical Study on a Deviant Text Tradition at the Max Weber
Centre in Erfurt. Since 2018, he has worked as a Senior Research Fellow at various
institutions, among them the Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in the history of religions
between Asia and Europe at the university of Bochum, the International Consortium for
Research in the Humanties Fate, Freedom and Prognostication: Strategies for Coping with
the Future in East Asia and Europe at the university of Erlangen-Nürnberg, and the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences Multiple Secularities: Beyond the
West, beyond Modernities at the university of Leipzig. Bernd-Christian Otto is co-founder of
the Center for Advanced Studies Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a
Global Perspective at the university of Erlangen-Nürnberg (www.cas-e.de), founded in 2022,
and scientific director of the Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices
(www.rensep.org), likewise founded in 2022. Since 2016, Bernd-Christian Otto is a board
member of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (https://esswe.org/).
His research focuses on the history of magic, where he combines different methodologies
such as conceptual history, discourse analysis, social theory, and ritual studies. His recent
book publications include co-written monograph (together with Daniel Bellingradt) Magical
Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe: The Clandestine Trade in Illegal Book Collections
(Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2017), the co-edited anthology (together with Martin
Fuchs et al.) Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative
Perspectives (Berlin: De Gruyter 2019), and the co-edited anthology (together with Dirk
Johannsen) Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration and the Power of Imagination (Leiden: Brill
2021). Most recently, Otto edited a special issue on the topic ‘Western learned magic as an
entangled tradition’ in the Bochum-based journal Entangled Religions 14/3 (2023). Side
interests include the reception of Buddha Maitreya in Western esotericism, processes of
religious individualisation, ritual theories and dynamics, the relation between religion and
ethics, and the peculiarities of religious experience. Bernd-Christian Otto has a broad interest
and expertise in the history of Western learned magic, and is, since a few years, particularly
interested in its modern and contemporary manifestations (magick).