Sophia Hendrikx is a PhD researcher working at the project ‘Tradition and Innovation: Conrad Gessner and Sixteenth-Century Ichthyology (1551-1602)’, a sub-project of the larger NWO-project ‘A New History of Fishes: A Long-term Approach to Fishes in Science and Culture, 1550-1880’.

More information about Sophia Hendrikx

Research

Sophia Hendrikx is a PhD researcher working at the project ‘Tradition and Innovation: Conrad Gessner and Sixteenth-Century Ichthyology (1551-1602)’, a sub-project of the larger NWO-project ‘A New History of Fishes: A Long-term Approach to Fishes in Science and Culture, 1550-1880’. This sub-project concentrates on development of ichthyology as a field of study in the 16th-century. Within the context of a broad corpus of primary sources, including well-known authors such as Pierre Belon, Hippolito Salviani, and Guillaume Rondelet, as well as lesser-known authors such as Gregor Mangolt and Johann Kentmann, Conrad Gessner’s Historia Piscium (1558) is taken as a point of focus. A wide range of related material including discussions of fish in emblem books, poetry, calendars, and cookery books, is also taken into account. 

Supervisors: Prof.dr. P.J. (Paul) Smith and Prof.dr. K.A.E. (Karl) Enenkel

Teaching activities

Things to do with Texts (BA), key module Humanities Lab.

Curriculum vitae

Sophia Hendrikx works as a PhD researcher at Leiden University in the NWO funded programme “A New History of Fishes” and as a rare book specialist at Rare Fish Books. She obtained her master’s degree at University College London in 2005 and has since worked as a rare book specialist concentrating in particular on early modern publications relating to ichthyology.  

Key publication

Identification of herring species in Conrad Gessner's ichthyological works, a case study on taxonomy, nomenclature, and animal depiction in the sixteenth century. In: Paul J. Smith and Karl A.E. Enenkel (Eds.), Zoology in Early Modern Culture. Intersections of Science, Theology, Philology and Political and Religious Education, Leiden: Brill, 2014

Publications