NEWS

Dr. Beatrice Baragli

Congratulations to our alumna Beatrice Baragli for achieving the ERC grant!

15 September, 2025

Warm Congratulations to our alumna, Dr. Beatrice Baragli, on winning the prestigious ERC Grant for her project on Late Sumerian Culture! (See abstract below.) 

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Beatrice began working on this application while she was still a fellow at the MBSF. We are very proud and happy for you on this wonderful achievement!
Sumerian is probably the earliest recorded language of mankind, and its writings are among the
most important sources for the study of the ancient Near East. It has been documented in the
cuneiform script for over three millennia, from approximately 3300/3200 BCE to 74/5 CE. However,
two fundamental questions remain unanswered: Why did Sumerian continue to be used by the
cultural and religious elite until the beginning of the Common Era, if the last native Sumerian
speaker passed away no later than the beginning of the second millennium BCE? What enabled
Sumerian to trump Akkadian, Aramaic, Persian, Parthian, and many other languages of that time in
the lottery of longevity? The core assumption of LASU is that Sumerian survived for so long because
it was considered sacred.
Modern scholars often consider this phase of Sumerian “corrupted” in comparison to the earlier
stages, when it was likely still a spoken language. They have therefore tended to overlook Late
Sumerian. Taking an innovative philological and religious-historical approach to the unsolved puzzle
of Sumerian linguistic longevity, LASU aims to apply a unique, language-order-based framework for
deciphering Sumerian’s interactions with other languages of the multilingual ancient Near East of
the first millennium BCE. LASU has the potential to open up new perspectives on the interactions
between ancient languages and to lay the foundations for a fundamentally new understanding of
how ancient societies viewed bilingualism. Ultimately LASU offers the potential to establish a new
subfield called “Late Sumerian Studies” within Assyriology.

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GROUP PICTURE 2025

We Are Hiring!

10 September, 2025

We are hiring – Finance Assistant (75% position)
After six years with the Buber Society of Fellows, our much-appreciated Finance Coordinator, Hadeel Jaafar, is moving on to a new position. We are now seeking a dedicated and detail-oriented Finance Assistant to join our team.

This is a 75% position, offering an excellent working environment within a vibrant academic community.
Full details regarding the role, requirements, and application process can be found in the attached job description.

 

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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2025-2026

1 July, 2024

Candidates who have completed their PhD at an Israeli or German university, as well as citizens of Israel or Germany who have received their PhD in any country, are eligible to apply. Application is open for those specializing in all fields of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. 

Deadline - September 18, 2024

12 Mar 2024

MBSF Hosted a Joint Coffee Hour!

18 March, 2024
The Martin Buber Society of Fellows hosted a joint coffee hour (our kaffeestunde) of Mandel School fellows - MA Honors Program, PhD Honors Program, and Mandel Scholion Research Center. A huge thank you to everyone who joined us!
Website Repair

Website Update

11 March, 2024
Our website is getting a makeover! Expect some changes as we work to enhance your experience. Hang tight, and thank you for your patience!
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Making Jewish voices audible

22 February, 2024

New interdisciplinary research project “Making Jewish voices audible: Documenting antisemitism from a Jewish perspective in Germany since October 7, 2023.” has started and is conducted by two of our fellows: Jasmin Spiegel and Anne-Christin Klotz.

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The research project aims to build on this tradition of witnessing. Our interdisciplinary research team consists of Dr. Anne-Christin Klotz, historian, and cultural scientist with a focus on the history of the Shoah in Eastern Europe and Yiddish culture, and Dr. Jasmin Spiegel, psychologist, and psychoanalyst with a clinical focus on post-traumatic stress disorder. As an interdisciplinary research team that operates at the interface between psychology, history and cultural studies, we have set ourselves the goal of collecting, recording and bearing witness to Jewish perspectives on and experiences with antisemitism after the massacre of October 7 within the German context. The interviews are to be conducted by using interview guidelines and analyzed scientifically. The questions that will be asked relate, among other things, to the experience of various forms of antisemitism, the perceived safety as Jews in Germany and the relationships with the respective non-Jewish environment. Furthermore, a possible transmission of familial traumas, influences, and changes on the individual's own Jewish identity as well as possible coping strategies will also be examined.

 

If you are interested in participating, please write an email to interviewproject@savion.huji.ac.il

 

Please find here the full project calls for in German and English:

 aufruf_interviewprojekt_deutsch_final.pdf

 aufruf_interviewprojekt_englisch_final.pdf

 

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OG

Congratulations to Dr. Omri Grinberg on the book he edited: "ReFiguring Global Challenges: Literary and Cinematic Explorations of War, Inequality, and Migration"

3 January, 2024

Minervini, Amanda, Amelie Bjorck, Omri Grinberg, and Amrita Ghosh (editors). Refiguring Global Challenges: Literary and Cinematic Explorations of War, Inequality, and Migration. Leiden, the Netherlands and Boston, MA: Brill (2023).

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https://brill.com/display/title/61683

 

About the book

An important task for scholars of cultural studies and the humanities, as well as for artistic creators, is to refigure the frames and concepts by which the world as we know it is kept in place. Without these acts of refiguration, the future could only ever be more of the (violent) same. In close dialogue with literary and cinematic works and practices, the essays of this volume help refigure and rethink such pressing contemporary issues as migration, inequality, racism, post-coloniality, political violence and human-animal relations. A range of fresh perspectives are introduced, amounting to a call for intellectuals to remain critically engaged with the social and planetary.

 

Among the contributors:

Mieke Bal, Dominick LaCapra, Sunayani Bhattacharya, and more.

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