Dr Mike Zuber
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities
+61 7 3346 9496
Researcher biography
Doctorate (University of Amsterdam), MA ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), BA (University of Basel)
Dr Mike A. Zuber is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of the University of Queensland. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Amsterdam with a substantial thesis titled ‘Spiritual Alchemy from the Age of Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood, 1600–1900’. Before moving to Brisbane, Mike held an Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Oxford, where he was affiliated with the Faculty of History and Wolfson College. His research interests cover the history of science and religious non-conformism in German contexts during the early-modern period.
Book
Zuber, Mike A. (2021). Spiritual alchemy: from Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood. New York, NY USA: Oxford University Press.
Book Chapters
Zuber, Mike A. (2023). "Our Dear Friend and Brother in the Lord": Abraham von Franckenberg's reception of Jacob Böhme. Jacob Böhme in Three Worlds: The Reception in Central-Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and Britain. (pp. 25-40) De Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110720525-004
Zuber, Mike A. (2019). Jacob Böhme and alchemy: a transmutation in three stages. Jacob Böhme and his world. (pp. 262-285) edited by Bo Andersson, Lucinda Martin, Leigh T.I. Penman and Andrew Weeks. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: 10.1163/9789004385092_012
Zuber, Mike A. (2019). Surely born-again Christianity has nothing to do with occult stuff like alchemy?. Hermes explains: thirty questions about Western esotericism. (pp. 252-260) edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Peter J. Forshaw and Marco Pasi. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.
Martin, Lucinda, Muratori, Cecilia, Penman, Leigh T.I. and Zuber, Mike (2019). The diffusion of Böhme's thought. Light in darkness: the mystical philosophy of Jacob Böhme. (pp. 124-144) edited by Claudia Brink, Lucinda Martin and Cecilia Muratori. Dresden, Germany: Sandstein Verlag.
Zuber, Mike A. (2018). Ésotérisme. Dictionnaire des Pays-Bas au Siècle d'Or: les Provinces-Unies de l'Union d'Utrecht à la Paix d'Utrecht. (pp. 241-243) edited by Willem Frijhoff and Catherine Secretan. Paris, France: CNRS Editions.
Zuber, Mike A. (2017). Theosophische Spekulation und erbauliche Frömmigkeit: Jacob Böhme, die neue Wiedergeburt und ihre Alchemisierung. Grund und Ungrund: der Kosmos des mystischen Philosophen Jacob Böhme. (pp. 114-129) edited by Claudia Brink and Lucinda Martin. Dresden, Germany: Sandstein Verlag.
Zuber, Mike A. (2015). Johann Jacob Zimmermann and god's two books: Copernican cosmology in Lutheran Germany around 1700. Knowing Nature in Early Modern Europe. (pp. 83-100) Taylor and Francis Inc.. doi: 10.4324/9781315653877
Zuber, Mike A. (2015). Johann Jacob Zimmermann and God's two books: Copernican cosmology in Lutheran Germany around 1700. Knowing nature in early modern Europe. (pp. 83-99) edited by David Beck. London, United Kingdom: Pickering & Chatto.
Journal Articles
Gard, Lennart and Zuber, Mike A. (2023). The angelic brethren and everyday sacredness: a Protestant theologian's journey from Berlin to Leiden in 1717*. Journal of Religious History, 47 (1), 68-93. doi: 10.1111/1467-9809.12927
Zuber, Mike A. (2022). Jacob Böhmes Veröffentlichungsstrategien in der Handschriftenkultur seiner Zeit. Daphnis, 51 (2-3), 1-34. doi: 10.1163/18796583-12340073
Zuber, Mike A. (2021). Alchemical promise, the fraud narrative, and the history of science from below: a German adept’s encounter with Robert Boyle and Ambrose Godfrey. Ambix, 68 (1), 28-48. doi: 10.1080/00026980.2020.1847750
Zuber, Mike A. and Prinke, Rafał T. (2020). Mistaken identity, forged prophecies, and a Paracelsus commentary: the elusive Jewish alchemist Mardochaeus de Nelle. Aleph, 20 (1-2), 263-299. doi: 10.2979/aleph.20.1-2.0263
Zuber, Mike A. (2020). Book review: Hope and Heresy: The Problem of Chiliasm in Lutheran Confessional Culture, 1570–1630. By Leigh T. I. Penman. Dordrecht: Springer, 2019. xxix + 275 pp. $119.99 hardcover. Church History, 89 (3), 685-687. doi: 10.1017/s0009640720001584
Zuber, Mike A. and Penman, Leigh T. I. (2020). Robert Boyle's anonymous 'Crosey-Crucian' identified: the German alchemist and religious dissenter Peter Moritz. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 74 (1), 95-103. doi: 10.1098/rsnr.2018.0055
Prinke, Rafał T. and Zuber, Mike A. (2020). "Learn to restrain your mouth": Alchemical rumours and their historiographical afterlives. Early Science and Medicine, 25 (5), 413-452. doi: 10.1163/15733823-00255p01
Prinke, Rafal T. and Zuber, Mike A. (2018). Alchemical patronage and the making of an adept: letters of Michael Sendivogius to Emperor Rudolf II and his chamberlain Hans Popp. Ambix, 65 (4), 324-355. doi: 10.1080/00026980.2018.1512776
Zuber, Mike A. (2018). The duke, the soldier of fortune, and a Rosicrucian legacy: exploring the roles of manuscripts in early-modern alchemy. Ambix, 65 (2), 122-142. doi: 10.1080/00026980.2018.1471778
Zuber, Mike A. (2018). Franciscans and the elixir of life: religion and science in the later Middle Ages. By Zachary A. Matus. The Catholic Historical Review, 104 (2), 348-349.
Zuber, Mike A. (2015). Aurora (Morgen Röte im auffgang, 1612) and Fundamental Report (Gründlicher Bericht, Mysterium Pansophicum, 1620). By Jacob Boehme. With a translation, introduction, and commentary by Andrew Weeks. Ambix, 62 (1), 99-100. doi: 10.1179/0002698014Z.00000000073
Zuber, Mike A. (2014). Between alchemy and Pietism: Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsmann's philological quest for ancient wisdom. Correspondences, 2 (1), 67-104.
Zuber, Mike A. (2014). Copernican cosmotheism: Johann Jacob Zimmermann and the mystical light. Aries - Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 14 (2), 215-245. doi: 10.1163/15700593-01402004
Zuber, Mike (2014). Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the secrets of antiquity. Aries-Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism, 14 (1), 121-124. doi: 10.1163/15700593-01401012
Zuber, Mike A. (2013). Review: Allison P. Coudert, Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America.. Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 2 (1), 100-105. doi: 10.5325/preternature.2.1.0100
Zuber, Mike A. (2011). The armchair discovery of the unknown southern continent: Gerardus Mercator, philosophical pretensions and a competitive trade. Early Science and Medicine, 16 (6), 505-541. doi: 10.1163/157338211X607772
Thesis
Zuber, Mike André (2017). Spiritual alchemy from the age of Jacob Boehme to Mary Anne Atwood, 1600–1900. PhD Thesis, Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.