Christoph Borbach is a media historian and theorist specializing in the historical epistemology of digital cultures and sensor-based environments. His research investigates how digitality emerges historically from practices and technologies of signal processing, operational temporalities, and infrastructural media. Bringing together media history and contemporary digital culture, he examines the epistemology and praxeology of sensor environments, auditory interfaces, and real-time data processing. His work aims to render digitality intelligible through concrete historical trajectories and contemporary case studies.
Borbach previously held research and teaching positions at Humboldt University of Berlin, Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, and the University of Vienna, among others. He was Junior Fellow at the DFG Research Group Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS) at Leuphana University Lüneburg and served as Acting Academic Coordinator of the DFG Research Training Group Locating Media. His German doctoral dissertation on the media-historical operationalization of transmission times (summa cum laude) received the 2024 Dirlmeier Prize, and was shortlisted for the Early Career Award of the German Society for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology (GWMT).
- Historische Medienpraxeologie
- Medienarchäologie des Digitalen
- Sensormediengeschichte
- Mediengeschichte der Laufzeitmessung
Monograph
Borbach, Christoph. Delay. Mediengeschichten der Verzögerung, 1850–1950. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2024. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839452349.
Edited Books and Special Issues
Borbach, Christoph, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Tristan Thielmann (eds.). New Media & Society 27, no. 8 (2025): “Digital Twinning.”
Borbach, Christoph, and Tristan Thielmann (eds.). communication+1 11, no. 2 (2025): “Digital Sovereignty.”
Borbach, Christoph, Timo Kaerlein, Robert Stock, and Sabine Wirth (eds.). Akustische Interfaces. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Schnittstellen von Technologien, Sounds und Menschen. Wiesbaden: Springer Vieweg, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-47635-9
Borbach, Christoph, and Max Kanderske (eds.). Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 22, no. 1 (2022): “Navigieren. Zugänge zu Medien und Praktiken der Raumdurchquerung.” http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/18780
Journal Papers
2026
Borbach, Christoph. “Unruly Actors: Farm Animals, the ‘Fence Problem,’ and Barbed Wire in the United States, 1850s–90s.” Animal History 2, no. 3 (2026): 91–110.
Borbach, Christoph. “Das Dowding System. Die gemeinsam geteilten Wurzeln von Operations Research, System Design und Big Data-Prozessierung in Echtzeit.” Archiv für Mediengeschichte 21 (2026): 85–95.
2025
Borbach, Christoph, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, and Tristan Thielmann. “Making Everything Ac-count-able: The Digital Twinning Paradigm.” New Media & Society 27, no. 8 (2025): 4369–4384.
Thielmann, Tristan, and Christoph Borbach. “The Digital Leviathan: Medializing Sovereignty for Critical AI and Data Studies.” communication+1 11, no. 2 (2025).
Couture, Stéphane, Sophie Toupin, and Christoph Borbach. “Sovereign AI, the Fragmented Internet, Data Crawlers, and the Opacity of Consent Forms: A Dialogue on Digital Sovereignty.” communication+1 11, no. 2 (2025).
Borbach, Christoph, and Max Kanderske. “Playful Resistance: The Politics of Sensor Counter-Practices in Urban Technospheres.” Mediapolis 10, no. 3 (2025).
Borbach, Christoph, and Max Kanderske. “Do Not Consent! Theorizing Media as Counter-Practice.” Dialogues on Digital Society 1, no. 2 (2025): 220–225.
2024
Borbach, Christoph, and Max Kanderske. “Counter-Practices: Understanding Sensor Datafication through Subversive Action.” Dialogues on Digital Society 1, no. 2 (2024): 177–197.https://doi.org/10.1177/29768640241305970
2023
Borbach, Christoph. “Medien- als Testgeschichte. Radarentwicklung in den Bell Labs und bei Western Electric.” Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft 15, no. 2 (2023): 73–85.
2022
Borbach, Christoph. “An Interlude in Navigation: Submarine Signalling as a Sonic Geomedia Infrastructure.” New Media & Society 24, no. 11 (2022): 2493–2513.
Borbach, Christoph, and Max Kanderske. “Navigieren durch heterogene Räume. Wegfindungen jenseits des Nautischen.” Navigationen. Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 22, no. 1 (2022): 5–31.
Borbach, Christoph. “Operations rooms. Infrastructures et Pratiques des Visualisations Aériennes Durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.” Transbordeur. Photographie Histoire Société 6 (2022): 112–121.
Before 2022
Borbach, Christoph. “Navigating (through) Sound. Auditory Interfaces in Maritime Navigation Practice, 1900–1930.” Interface Critique 2 (2019): 17–33.
Borbach, Christoph. “Speichern als Übertragen – Übertragen als Speichern. Zur technischen Frühgeschichte akustischer delay lines und ihre Verschränkung zweier Medienfunktionen.” Technikgeschichte 86, no. 2 (2019): 101–129.
Borbach, Christoph. “Mister Phonograph. Das Gendering des Phonographen und Echos Re-Inkarnation als Mann.” Jahrbuch Musik und Gender 11 (2019): 133–144.
Borbach, Christoph. “Experimentelle Praktiken. Apparative Radioexperimente in der Weimarer Republik.” Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 17, no. 1 (2017): 129–149.
Borbach, Christoph. “Siren Songs and Echo’s Response: Towards a Media Theory of the Voice in the Light of Speech Synthesis.” On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture 2 (2016).
Book Chapters (selected)
2026
Borbach, Christoph. “Signal Environments & Proximity Sensing. Lines of Navigation in Subsea Space, ca. 1920.” In Uncanny Environments, edited by Konstantin Haensch et al. Hamburg: Textem, 2026. (forthcoming; in print)
Borbach, Christoph. “Sound Science im Meer. Sonar und die Datafizierung seines Elementarmediums.” In Elementare Medien. Stoffe, Theorien, Methoden, edited by Maximilian Hepach and Birgit Schneider. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2026. (forthcoming; in print)
Borbach, Christoph. “‘Automation in Agriculture,’ 1965: Technological Innovation from the Field.” In Umwelt – Technik – Wissen, edited by Fabian Zimmer et al. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2026.
2025
Borbach, Christoph, Timo Kaerlein, Robert Stock, and Sabine Wirth. “Akustische Interfaces. Eine Lagebestimmung.” In Akustische Interfaces. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Schnittstellen von Technologien, Sounds und Menschen, edited by Christoph Borbach et al. Wiesbaden: SpringerVieweg, 2025, 1–33.
Borbach, Christoph, and Benjamin Lindquist. “Körper, Stimmen, Prothesen. Eine Geschichte sprechender Interfaces als Assistenztechnologien.” In Akustische Interfaces. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Schnittstellen von Technologien, Sounds und Menschen, edited by Christoph Borbach et al., Wiesbaden: SpringerVieweg, 2025, 145–166.
Before 2025
Borbach, Christoph, and Tristan Thielmann. “Chains of Co-operation in the 1940s: Working on the Air Situation Picture.” In Materiality of Cooperation, edited by Sebastian Gießmann et al. Berlin et al.: Springer VS, 2023, 91–130.
Borbach, Christoph. “Videochat-Kultur. Corona, Zoom und Paul Virilios ‘Terminal-Bürger’.” In Corona und die ‚anderen‘ Wissenschaften, edited by Peter Klimczak et al. Wiesbaden: SpringerVieweg, 2022, 1–14.
Borbach, Christoph. “‘A Wall of Sound’. Das Unterwasserschallsignalwesen als Hörregime und technoakustische Einkerbung des Ozeans.” In Acoustic Intelligence. Hören und Gehorchen, edited by Tomy Brautschek et al. Berlin and Boston: deGruyter, 2022, 133–154.
Borbach, Christoph. “Epistemologisches Reverse Engineering. Oder: Über Techniktheorie(n), Gilbert Simondon und das Echolot.” In Black Boxes – Versiegelungskontexte und Öffnungsversuche. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Eckhard Geitz et al. Berlin u. Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, 227–252.
Borbach, Christoph. “Reduced to the Max. Medienminiaturisierung als Erfolgsgeschichte am Beispiel der GPS-Empfänger.” In Kleine Medien. Kulturtheoretische Lektüren, edited by Oliver Ruf and Uta Schaffers. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019, 35–57.
Borbach, Christoph. “Flying the Beam or The Sonic Ecology of Western Wayfinding in Aviation, ca. 1930.” In The Global Composition. Conference on Sound, Ecology, and Media Culture Proceedings, edited by Sabine Breitsamer and Cansu Karakiz. Dieburg: Universitätsverlag, 2018, 132–140.