Board

Eva Illouz is the author of 18 books, translated into many languages. Her studies focus on the sociology of capitalism, the sociology of emotions, the sociology of gender, and the sociology of culture. She has been awarded numerous international and Israeli prizes, including the E.M.E.T prize in Sociology in 2018, and the Aby Warburg prize for 2024.

Oron Shagrir was named the Rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2025. He holds the Schulman Chair in Philosophy there and is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He was head of the Department of Cognitive Science from 1997-2009 (now the Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences). He served as Vice Rector from 2013-2017 and Vice President for International Affairs from 2017-2025.

Professor Shagrir’s research focuses on the nature of computation and representation, the role of computational models in cognitive and brain sciences, and the history of computability and AI. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science and an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science from the Hebrew University. His PhD in Philosophy and Cognitive Science was from the University of California, San Diego.

Professor Shagrir has received numerous prizes for excellence in research and teaching, including, most recently, the 2023 Covey Award, given by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy, and the 2024 Barwise Prize, awarded by the American Philosophical Association.

Professor Shagrir is the author of The Nature of Physical Computation (Oxford University Press, 2022), and The Indeterminacy of Computation (with Jack Copeland, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). He is also the editor, with Jack Copeland and Carl Posy, of Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond (MIT Press, 2013), and is the author of numerous papers on computation and the mind.

Professor Christof Rapp, born in 1964, studied Philosophy, Ancient Greek, Logic, and Philosophy of Science in Tübingen and Munich. He obtained his doctorate at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in 1993 and his post-doctoral lecturing qualification (“Habilitation”) at the University of Tübingen in 2000.From 2001 to 2009, he held the Chair for Ancient and Contemporary Philosophy at Humboldt-University in Berlin. In 2009, he assumed the Chair for Ancient Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich.His main fields of research are ancient philosophy and its impact on modern debates in ontology, moral philosophy and moral psychology and argumentation theory.

Christof Rapp headed Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie e.V. He was co-director of the excellence cluster TOPOI from 2007 to 2009, founding director of the Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy in Berlin and is co-director of MUSAΦ (Munich School of Ancient Philosophy). 

In October 2009, Christof Rapp was appointed as academic director of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.

Professor Stefanie Middendorf, born in 1973, is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany, and appointed Gerda Henkel Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and the German Historical Institute in London for 2025/26. She is currently member of the steering committee of the excellence cluster project “Imaginamics” at the University of Jena and editor of the “Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte”. Stefanie Middendorf has studied History, Literature and Psychology in Freiburg, Basel and Jerusalem, holds a PhD in History from Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg and has received her post-doctoral qualification (“habilitation) from Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in 2019.Her recent research focuses on the history of National Socialism and the Holocaust, emergency rule and state violence in comparative perspectives. She has also published widely on European and French cultural history, the experience of crises, the history of capitalism and colonialism, and German-Jewish history in the long twentieth century. Her monographs include “Macht der Ausnahme. Reichsfinanzministerium und Staatlichkeit 1919-1945” (Berlin/Boston 2022) and “Massenkultur. Zur Wahrnehmung gesellschaftlicher Modernität in Frankreich, 1880-1980 (Göttingen 2009).

Professor Silvia Jonas, born in 1983, studied Political Science, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at the University of Munich and holds a BPhil in Philosophy from Oxford University (2010) and a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin (2012).She held a Polonsky Fellowship at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute (2012-2017) as well as a Minerva Fellowship (2017-2019) and a Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellowship (2019-2022) at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich before taking up her current position as professor of philosophy at the University of Bamberg.

Her main research interests are in metaphysics and epistemology, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. Central questions are how mathematics shapes the philosophical conceptualization of realitywhether reality exceeds the physical realm, and if there can be knowledge beyond the limits of language.

Ruth HaCohen (Pinczower), born in Jerusalem, is the Artur Rubinstein Professor of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and since 2013 the Head of the School of the Arts there and since April 2014 also the Director of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the 2012 winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award by the American Musicological Society for the most distinguished book in musicology *The Music Libel Against the Jews * (Yale 2011) and the first Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality in the Humanistic Disciplines for the same book.

She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Balzan Research Project: “Towards a global history of music” (Director: Prof. Reinhard Strohm) and in the Advisory Committee of the Polyphony Foundation in Nazareth (organization whose purpose is to bridge the divide between Arab and Jewish communities in Israel by creating a common ground where young people come together around classical music).
Ruth HaCohen graduated in musicology and Jewish thought and received her PhD in Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1992). She is the author of books and articles that explicate the role played by music in shaping and reflecting wider cultural and political contexts and processes. Her points of departure are historical, aesthetic and semiotic, deploying as well theories from psychology, anthropology and critical thought. Her interpretative approach is comparative, referring to literary and visual art forms, viewing her subject matters in relation especially to religions, secularization and ideational and cultural trends. Her work extends from baroque music to modern one, with a special emphasis on opera, oratorio, and song, dealing also with the relations between Ashkenazi-Jewish and Christian music. Among subjects she has investigated are the cultural uses of “noise” and “harmony”; strategies of signification in baroque and classical music and in Wagner’s work; the rise of Sympathy as a cultural paradigm in baroque music and theory and its later repercussions. She also wrote about poetic and religious layers in Israeli folk song, and on various aspects in Arnold Schoenberg’s work.
Her recent publications include:

• The Music Libel Against the Jews by Yale University Press 2011 ( http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300167788 )
• Tuning the Mind: Connecting Aesthetic Theory to Cognitive Science (Transaction, 2003 with Ruth Katz; "Between Noise and Harmony: The Oratorical Moment in the Musical Entanglements of Jews and Christians" (Critical Inquiry 2006).
• She had recently completed the book *Composing Power, Singing Freedom: Overt and Covert Connections between Music and Politics in the West*, submitted to Van Leer and Hakibutz Hameuchad, in Hebrew (with Yaron Ezrahi).

Ruth HaCohen was the Chair of the Department during 2001-4 and again during 2012-13, and the Head of the PhD Honors Program in the Humanities during 2008-9. She has lectured in numerous national and international conferences and institutes including UNAM, México City; Duke, Princeton and Johns Hopkins University; Einstein Forum, Potsdam; the University of Oxford, Vienna, Amsterdam and others. Ruth HaCohen was a visiting scholar as St. John College Oxford, in 1996-7 and a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2004-5. She was invited as a distinguished scholar to Brown Humanity Center in Spring 2008, and was a guest professor at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin in Summer 2009. Between 2008-2011 she belonged as a Senior Fellow to the research group “The Interpretive Imagination: Connections between Religion and Art in Jewish Culture in its Contexts” at Scholion, Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University. During 2011-12 she stayed as a visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and was granted a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio.

Prof. Dan Diner (Ph.D., 1973, University of Frankfurt am Main) is Professor of Modern History at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, and Director of the Simon-Dubnow-Institute for Jewish History and Culture at the University of Leipzig.

He is the author of numerous publications an twentieth-century history, Jewish history, Middle Eastern history and German history, particularly in the period of National Socialism and the Holocaust. His most recent publications include:

Zeitenschwelle. Gegenwartsfragen an die Geschichte, München 2010.
Lost in the Sacred. Why the Muslim World Stood Still, Princeton, N. J., 2009. English translation of: Versiegelte Zeit. Über den Stillstand in der islamischen Welt, Berlin 2005.
Disseminating German Tradition. The Thyssen Lectures, Leipzig 2009 (ed. with Moshe Zimmermann).
Aufklärungen. Über Varianten von Moderne, Zürich 2008.
Cataclysms. A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge, Madison, Wis., 2008. English translation of: Das Jahrhundert verstehen. Eine universalhistorische Deutung, Munich 1999.
Gegenläufige Gedächtnisse. Über Geltung und Wirkung des Holocaust, Göttingen 2007.
Restitution and Memory. Material Restoration in Europe, New York/Oxford 2007 (ed. with Gotthard Wunberg).
Dark Times, Dire Decisions. Jews and Communism, Oxford 2005 (ed. with Jonathan Frankel).

His most important books have been translated into Czech, English, Hebrew, Italian, Polish and Turkish. In 2006 he was awarded the Ernst Bloch Prize, and in 2007 the Italian Premio Capalbio.

Jürgen Fohrmann, Prof. of German Literature and Theory, University of Bonn, born 1953, studied at the Universities of Münster and Bielefeld, PhD 1980, ‘Habilitation’ 1989, Heisenberg-Fellow, since 1991 Prof. at the University of Bonn, 1994-1997 President of the “Deutsche Germanistenverband”

 1999-2002: Co-Director of the SFB „Judentum und Christentum. Konstituierung und Differenzierung in Antike und Gegenwart”;1999 –2004 Co-Director of the „Kulturwissenschaftliches Forschungskolleg ‚Medien und kulturelle Kommunikation’“ (Aachen, Cologne, Bonn); April 2009-April 2015 President of the University of Bonn, Member of numerous Research Councils and Boards (Chair of the Advisory Board of the Franz Rosenzweig-Research Center, 2000–2012).

Last Books (Selection):
Schiffbruch mit Strandrecht. Der ästhetische Imperativ in der ‚Kunstperiode’, München 1998.
Jürgen Fohrmann/Andrea Schütte/Wilhelm Voßkamp (Eds.), Medien der Präsenz. Museum, Bildung und Wissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert, Köln 2001.
Jürgen Fohrmann/Arno Orzessek (Eds.), Zerstreute Öffentlichkeiten. Zur Programmierung des Gemeinsinns, München 2002.
Jürgen Brokoff/Jürgen Fohrmann (Eds.), Politische Theologie. Formen und Funktionen im 20. Jahrhundert, Paderborn 2003.
Jürgen Fohrmann/Erhard Schüttpelz (Eds.), Die Kommunikation der Medien, Tübingen 2004.
Jürgen Fohrmann (Ed.), Rhetorik. Figuration und Performanz, Stuttgart/Weimar 2004.
Jürgen Fohrmann (Ed.), Gelehrte Kommunikation. Wissenschaft und Medium zwischen dem 16. und 20. Jahrhundert, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2005.
Jürgen Brokoff/Jürgen Fohrmann/Hedwig Pompe/Brigitte Weingart (Eds.). Die Kommunikation der Gerüchte, Göttingen 2008.

 

Professor Maren R. Niehoff was born in 1963 in Germany and currently holds the Max Cooper Chair in Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was the head of the interdisciplinary honors program in the humanities, “AMIRIM”. Currently, she serves as the head of a research group at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies (2017-18). Her research focuses on encounters between Jews, pagans and Christians in the Greco-Roman period. Her recent publications include monographs on Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria (Cambridge University Press 2011, awarded the Polonsky Prize) and Philo of Alexandria ,being translated into both German and Hebrew, ((Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuhad), an Intellectual biography (Yale University Press 2017, German translation forthcoming at Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen) as well as edited volumes on Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters (Leiden 2012) and Journeys in the Roman East: Imagined and Real (Tübingen 2017).

Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology and Social Theory at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena, Germany and Director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg at the University of Erfurt. He also is an Affiliated Professor at the Department of Sociology, New School for Social Research, New York.

In 1997, he received his PhD in Political Science from Humboldt-University in Berlin. After that, he held teaching positions at the universities of Mannheim, Jena, Augsburg and Essen and served as Vice-President and General Secretary for Research Committee 35 (COCTA) of ISA and as one of the directors of the Annual International Conference on Philosophy and the Social Sciences in Prague. In 2016, he was a visiting professor at the FMSH/EHESS in Paris. He is editor of the international journal Time and Society. His publications focus on Social Acceleration, Resonance and the Temporal Structures of Modernity as well as the Political Theory of Communitarianism.

 

(Studies in Ancient Medicine 48; Brill: Leiden, 2017)

Publications:
1) Social Acceleration. A New Theory of Modernity. Trans. By Jonathan Trejo-Mathys, New York: Columbia University Press. 2013
2) Alienation and Acceleration. Towards a Critical Theory of Late-Modern Temporality, Malmö/Arhus: NSU Press 2010.
3) High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power and Modernity: Penn State University Press, 2008 (Ed. with William Scheuerman).
4) Four Levels of Self-Interpretation. A Paradigm for Social Philosophy and Political Criticism, in: Philosophy and Social Criticism, Jg. 30 (2004), Heft 5/6, S. 691-720.
5) Leading a Life. Five key elements in the hidden curriculum of our schools, in: Nordic Studies in Education, Vol. 40 (2/2013), S. 97-111.

I am a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Department of Communication and Journalism, and one of the founders of the university’s Political Communication program. My main area of research and teaching is political communication. My theoretical and empirical efforts are focused on bringing the media into political processes and political science models, and introducing politics into media theories. My research so far has focused on issues such as the role of charisma in politics, political personalization, media effects in Israeli political campaigns, media effects during political conflicts and mediated public diplomacy.Currently I am involved in a large-scaled project that centers on the effects of political culture and narrative proximity between nations, and their role in such issues as international communication flow and public diplomacy.

I have a lot of experience in political and media consultation for Israeli politicians and public organizations. In the past I have worked as a reporter for the Hadashot daily newspaper.

 

RA Dr. iur. Stefan Stolte, born in 1973, studied law at the University of Bonn. Stolte has worked as Head of HR at Stifterverband fuer die Deutsche Wissenschaft (German association of founders promoting science and research) since 2005.

In 2011 he was appointed as member of the executive board of the Deutsches Stiftungszentrum (German Foundation Center). He is active in consulting and managing foundations and trusts.
Also, he regularly publishes on foundations and foundation law and holds a variety of lectureships at public and private universities in Germany.

Gerhart von Graevenitz, born 1944. studied both German and English Language and Literature as well as History of the Arts. From 1988 to 2009, he served as professor for contemporary German literature and general literature science at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

From 1996 to 2000, he held the position as permanent guest professor at the Karl-University of Prague, Czech Republic. From 2000 to 2009, he was rector of the University of Konstanz. From 2006 to 2009, he was chairman of the cooperation council of the International Bodenseeschule. From 2006 to 2009, he served as chairman of the regional conference of rectors of the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. From 2003 to 2009, he was a member of the commission “Studies and Teaching” at the conference of rectors of the institutions of higher education. Since 2007, he has been a member of the board of the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). Since 2008, he has served as a member of the council of the second German TV-channel. Since 2009, he has been a member of the advisory committee of the Humboldt University Berlin. Since 2009, he is chairman of the endowment fund Martin-Buber-Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Currently, he is co-editor of the German “Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte”.
His research focuses on History of literature from the 17th to the 19th century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theodor Fontane, History of the media and the culture in the 20th century, literature and anthropology, and studies in literature and cultural science.