|
 |
Dr. Rebecca Weil
Rebecca Weil is a psychologist with a main interest in social cognition research. Broadly speaking, social cognition is concerned with the way people process socially relevant information. Her dissertational project focused on the question how positive and negative information is processed, when this information is known to be false. Following this line of research her current projects are concerned with processes underlying negation and invalid information.
However, negation is not her only research interest. Past and current investigations focus on rule-based cognitive processes, for instance cognitive balance, and whether and under what conditions such processes can be accomplished automatically. Last but not least, Rebecca is also interested in the way people form and change their attitudes and how these attitudes can be measured.
|
 |
Dr. Michael Ebstein
Michael Ebstein has completed his PhD in the Arabic Language and Literature Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The title of his PhD was "Philosophy, Mysticism and Esotericism: Isma'ili Thought and Andalusian Mysticism". He is currently revising his dissertation for the purpose of publishing it as a book.
Michael has received a Yad Hanadiv/Rothschild post-doctoral fellowship and is now conducting his post-doctoral research at the Freie Universitat in Berlin, in the Institut fur Islamwissenschaft. He is part of the research unit "Intellectual History of the Islamicate World", headed by Prof. Sabine Schmidtke.
Michael is interested in medieval Islamic mysticism, particularly in the relation between Sunni mysticism and Shi'i thought. He is also interested in studying in the future the links and affinities between Jewish and Islamic mysticism, especially as these developed in medieval al-Andalus (Muslim Spain).
|
 |
Dr. David Horst
David Horst completed his PhD in philosophy at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in March 2010. Since then he has been working as a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leipzig (Germany). David main interests' in philosophy are: action theory, philosophy of mind and language, and meta-ethics.
In his dissertation, David develop and defend an account of intentional action according to which such action is the object of a special kind of knowledge, namely practical knowledge. In his future research, he plan to work on the notions of autonomy and self-consciousness.
|
 |
Dr. Laura Jockusch
Laura Jockusch is a historian specializing in the social, cultural, and political history of European Jews in the Holocaust and postwar periods. In 2007, she received her PhD from New York University with a thesis on the beginnings of Holocaust research by Jews and from a Jewish perspective in the aftermath of World War II. Comparing the cases of France, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Italy, the dissertation takes issue with the misconception that survivors remained silent about their pasts for several decades and that systematic research on the Holocaust began only in the 1960s. It demonstrates that history writing constituted an integral response of those who had endured, witnessed, and survived the European Jewish catastrophe and that their early postwar efforts were trailblazers for later Holocaust historiography.
Jockusch’s current research examines issues of justice, legal redress, and retribution among Jews in postwar Germany. It analyzes how Jewish individuals along with communal and international organizations related to Nazi war crime trials at Allied military tribunals and explores their multifaceted attempts to intervene on behalf of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
|
 |
Dr. Samuel (Shai) Secunda
Shai Secunda received his Ph.D. in Talmud from Yeshiva University in 2008, having also pursued Iranian studies at Harvard. He spent two years as a postdoctoral associated in Judaic studies at Yale University, and was a Mandel Fellow at the Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Jewish Research. He researches classical rabbinic and Zoroastrian literature, and focuses on the study of the Babylonian Talmud within its Iranian religious context. Along with work on rabbinic and Zoroastrian texts, his research endeavors to apply theories from the study of orality and gender, and a framework of comparative religions to late antique textual traditions. He is completing two books – one on methods of reading the Babylonian Talmud contextually, and the other on the interplay between Zoroastrian and rabbinic conceptions of the female body and ritual laws of menstruation.
|
 |
Dr. Liat Hasenfratz
Liat Hasenfratz completed her Psychology studies in Frankfurt, where she studied young children's self-knowledge. She came to Jerusalem to work on her dissertation at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Professor Ruth Butler. Over the course of those years she investigated the development of self-related knowledge and social behavior; she studied young children's motivations, goals, and responses to failure. In 2011 Liat submitted her PhD thesis that challenges wide held beliefs and refutes influential theories about young children's peculiar motivations and immature self-regulative abilities. For this work she was awarded an honorary scholarship from the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Education in Israel.
As a Buber Fellow she will be examining the influence of culture on early social and moral behavior; and compare moral development across cultures in search for insights into universals of human social development.
|
 |
Dr. Yifat Monnickendam
Yifat Monnickendam completed her dissertation at Bar Ilan University (2011), titled ‘Halakhic Issues in the Writings of the Syriac Church Fathers Ephrem and Aphrahat”. She is now completing her tenure as a Crane Family Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Jewish Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University and a Visiting Scholar at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Early Christianity (2010-2012).
Yifat specializes in the comparative study of Jewish, Christian, and Roman sources from antiquity to early Byzantium, viewing them through the lens of legal issues. By applying philological and comparative methods to texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin, she addresses questions regarding the sources, formation, and development of each of these texts individually. Based on these analyses, she also discusses the trends and ties between the different Mediterranean communities in late antiquity, ties which led to polemic, adoption of legal traditions, or their preservation. Following her work on matrimonial law in the writings of Ephrem the Syrian and its relation to early Jewish legal traditions, in her next project, she focuses on the Syro-Roman Lawbook, and its relation to Jewish, Roman and Christian legal traditions.
|
 |
Dr. Tawfiq Da’adli
The Subject of my current research is: The Transmission of artistic knowledge in Persian and Mughal Art: Illustration of the three rulers Sultan Husayn, Shah-Tahmasp and Akbar as an examination for representation of power. Rulers and members of the ruling elite were often patrons of illustrated manuscripts, which were usually presented as gifts to other rulers or ruling elites. On the face of it, many illustrations seem to be no more than mere amusing and esthetic decorations, and yet, at least some illustrated manuscripts, especially of royal origin, may serve us as authentic testimony to the paraphernalia, the habits and the ideology of ruling classes.
I’m also interested in researching the material culture of medieval Palestine. As part of this I’m participating in publishing excavations of different sites around the country from the early Islamic period and the Ottoman era.
|
 |
Dr. Hiltrud Otto
Hiltrud Otto, originally from Bavaria, southern Germany, earned her Diploma in Psychology at the University in Regensburg, before she became a participant of the Graduate School "Integrative Competencies and Well-Being" in Osnabrück. In her PhD study she investigated culture-specific attachment strategies in Cameroonian Nso children, which is why she traveled to Cameroon often and spent many monthsin the North-West Province of Cameroon among the Nso. She received her PhD in 2009 at the University of Osnabrück, where she worked as a lecturer and research assistant at the department “Culture & Development” and as a scientific staff member of the “Lower Saxonian Institute of Early Development and Learning” (nifbe).
Hiltrud is still interested in the cultural influences on early socio-emotional development of children. Presently, she coordinates research projects in Germany, Israel, and South Africa, with the idea to provide a culture-sensitive formulation of one of the most important developmental theories to date: attachment theory. Hiltrud is a member of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP).
|
 |
Dr. Devorah Manekin
Devorah Manekin completed her Ph.D. in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles (2012). Her dissertation is entitled "Waging War among Civilians: The Production and Restraint of Counterinsurgent Violence in the Second Intifada." The project examines patterns of violence in conflict, applying organizational and management theories to the study of how violence against civilians in conflict is unleashed and curbed.
Manekin's research interests include political violence, civil wars, insurgency and counterinsurgency, and post-conflict transition and reconstruction. Her current research projects include a study of competing notions of militarized masculinity and their relationship to violence, as well as an examination of post-conflict combatant demobilization and reintegration strategies. In addition, she plans on revising her dissertation into a book.
|
|
|
|
