Challenging the Archives: Reconstructing the Lives and Networks of Sex Workers in Early Modern Venice through Digital Tools

 

In early modern Venice, sex workers were frequently accused of practicing magic and witchcraft, subsequently facing trial before the Holy Office. Drawing upon this empirical evidence, this project examines hundreds of Inquisition files spanning the years 1580 to 1630 to reconstruct these women's social networks. The objective is to contextualize and interpret the complex interrelationships between magic, sex work, and gender dynamics in early modern society. Adopting a microhistorical approach that integrates close reading with social network analysis and Gephi visualizations, this paper presents preliminary findings and discusses the methodological challenges of translating archival sources into digital data—particularly when researching the lives of marginalized, working-class women.

About the Speaker

Alessandra Celati is a research fellow in Early Modern History at the University of Turin, Italy. She earned her PhD from the University of Pisa and was a Marie Curie Global Fellow between Stanford University and the University of Verona, where she conducted research for several years. She is currently working on a project focused on "Love Magic and Sex Work in Early Modern Venice: A Network of Women in the Inquisition Records." For years, her research has focused on religious dissent, heretical movements, and witchcraft in the early modern period. She has integrated these topics using an interdisciplinary approach that combines religious history, women's history and the application of Digital Humanities tools. She has published numerous articles on these subjects in both Italian and international peer-reviewed journals.

Her first book, The World of Girolamo Donzellini: A Network of Heterodox Physicians in Sixteenth-Century Venice, was published by Routledge in 2023. In 2025, her second book, Donne che creano disordine. Storia di Caterina ed altre eretiche nel Cinquecento (Women Creating Disorder: The Story of Caterina and Other Heretics in the Sixteenth Century), was published in Einaudi's history series. The book is currently being translated into English, and this English version is under evaluation by Stanford University press.

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