Transnational Encounters
Migration
History of Knowledge
European/Jewish/MENA History
Mandate Palestine
Israel Studies
Current Projects
My current research examines colonial encounters of knowledge in Mandatory Jerusalem, focusing on how Jewish, Arab, and British scholars and officials interacted in shared institutions such as museums, scholarly societies, and government departments. Drawing on archival and visual sources in multiple languages, I explore how migrating and local forms of knowledge shaped – and were shaped by – these intercultural encounters within the imperial–colonial framework of British rule. By analyzing collaborative yet politically charged spaces, my work offers a new perspective on the cultural and intellectual history of the Middle East and the Arab-Jewish conflict, and on the role of knowledge in mediating relations across political, ethnic, and religious divides.
Curriculum Vitae
Fellowships and Grants
Postdoctoral fellowships: Spinoza (2024–25, Department of Israel Studies, University of Haifa); Salo & Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellowship in Jewish History (2024, Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford); Bloom (2023–24, Department of Israel Studies, University of Haifa); Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace (2022–23, Hebrew University of Jerusalem); George L. Mosse Program in History (2021–22, University of Wisconsin–Madison & Hebrew University of Jerusalem).
Doctoral fellowships: PhD Honors Program (2018–21, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Herzl (2018, Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme (2017–18, Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes & Leo Baeck Institute London); Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center (2016–17, Hebrew University of Jerusalem); Da'at Hamakom Center – i-Core in the Study of Modern Jewish Culture (2016).
2023: Israel Science Foundation (ISF) Book Manuscript Translation Grant (for the English edition of A New Orient)
2023: Book Publishing Grants (for the Hebrew edition of A New Orient): Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem; World Union of Jewish Studies; Arieh (Leo) Lubin Foundation
2018: The Shlomo Glass and Penny Balaban Glass Special Grant for PhD Students of Jewish History
Prizes
2025: M. Ish-Shalom Award for First Book in the History of the Land of Israel, Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (for the Hebrew edition of A New Orient)
2025: Honorable Mention, Am Ve’Olam Award for Outstanding Book in History, Historical Society of Israel (for the Hebrew edition of A New Orient)
2024: Honorable Mention, Zalman Shazar Award for Research in Jewish History (for the Hebrew edition of A New Orient)
2024: Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award, Association for Jewish Studies (for the English edition of A New Orient)
2023: Naomi and Bernard Frieden Best Dissertation Award, Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2022: Best Dissertation Award, Middle East & Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI)
2022: Jacob L. Talmon Award for Outstanding PhD Students of European History
2020: Nachum Ben-Eli Honig Award, Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2019: Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem Research Award for PhD Students in the Field of German-Jewish History and Culture
2019: P.A. Alsberg Award for Research on Archives, Association of Israeli Archivists
2018: Greenstein Award (PhD project), Institute for Jewish Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Education
2021: PhD degree in History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2016: MA degree in History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Publications
Books
A New Orient: From German Scholarship to Middle Eastern Studies in Israel (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2024) (Revised and updated English edition)
A New Orient: From German Orientalism to Israeli Mizrahanut (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2024) (Hebrew).
Peer-Reviewed chapters in books
“’Send my regards to those working on the al-Balādhurī manuscript’: The Study of Arabic and Islam in Interwar Jerusalem as Intellectual Common Ground,” in Rachel Mairs, Sarah Irving, Karene Sanchez and Lucia Admiraal (eds.), Colonial Vocabularies: Teaching and Learning Arabic in Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2025), 159–86.
(co-authored with Hanan Harif) “‘A Complete, Multifaceted Discipline’: The Debate over the History of Jews in Muslim Lands and its Teaching,” in: Uzi Rebhun and Yfaat Weiss (eds.), The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Nation State and Higher Education (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2024), 687–718 (Hebrew).
“Rediscovering the Goldziher Legacy in Jerusalem: Religion, Language, and History in the Making of a Hebrew University,” in: Hans-Jürgen Becker, Kinga Dévényi, Sebastian Günther and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.), Building Bridges: Ignaz Goldziher and His Correspondents. Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Islamic History and Civilization, Vol. 212 (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 139–64.
Peer-reviewed articles
(co-authored with Hanan Harif) “Whose Jewish History is it Anyway? Ideology and Practice in the Study of the Jewish Communities from the Islamic World in Nascent Israel,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2025)
“Visualizing Farewell: A Jewish Soldier’s Return to Postwar Germany through Private Photography,” Jewish Culture and History 25, no. 2 (2024): 233–54.
“Conflicting German Orientalism: Zionist Arabists and Arab Scholars, 1926–1938,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 5 (2023): 1112–31.
“The Archive as Storyteller: Refractions of German-Jewish Oriental Studies Migration in Personal Archives,” Jahrbuch des Dubnow-Instituts / Dubnow Institute Yearbook XVII (2018): 425–46.
“A Man of Contention: Martin Plessner (1900–1973) and His Encounters with the Orient,” Naharaim: Journal of German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History 10, no. 1 (2016): 79–100.
“'The Sheik': Understanding American Orientalism through Visual and Narrative Differences in Three Decades of Discussion,” Slil: Online Journal for History, Film and Television 10 (2016): 39–57 (Hebrew).
“‘Ma’alesh, Nistader’: Arabic in the Folklore of the Palmach during the 1940s,” Hayo Haya: Student History Journal 11 (2015): 46–66 (Hebrew).
Book Reviews
Eyal Clyne, Orientalism, Zionism and Academic Practice: Middle East and Islam Studies in Israeli Universities (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), in The New East 59 (2020): 207–210 (Hebrew).
Recent Presentations
“Age of Collegiality? The British Mandate Department of Education as a Site of Encounter,” Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) 57th Annual Conference. Washington, DC, December 2025 [accepted].
“German Orientalism and Political Engagement: Knowledge Production and Arab-Jewish Relations in Mandate Palestine,” One Century of “Oriental” and Semitic Studies, 1830 through 1933: Scholarly Networks, Trajectories and Concepts, S.T. Lee Conference, Institute for Advanced Study. Princeton, December 2025 [invited].
“Towards a Cultural History of Sinai 1956,” part of the roundtable session Reimagining Place, Myth, and Memory in Zionist and Israeli History, 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS). Haifa, July 2025 [accepted].
“The Ambivalence of Knowledge: The School of Oriental Studies and Jewish-Muslim Relations in Mandate Palestine,” Friends, Enemies, Frenemies: Ambivalences of Jewish-Muslim Relations Workshop. Heidelberg, January 2025 [invited].
“From Beirut with Love: Young Zionist Orientalists at the AUB, 1930–1940,” Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 58th Annual Meeting. Online, November 2024.
“The Palestine Folk Museum, 1936–1948: Encounters of Knowledge and National Narratives”; and “The Colonialist’s Diary: Humphrey Bowman,” 40th Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS). Prague, July 2024.
“Unter Fremden Völkern: The Ethnographic Recording Project in POW Camps during World War I,” Annual Conference of German Studies: Language, Culture, Society. Tel Aviv, June 2024.
“Goitein, Ben-Zvi, and the Study of Jewish History in Muslim Lands,” History, Memory and Identity among Jewish Communities in the Muslim World: An International Conference marking the 75th Anniversary of the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. Jerusalem, June 2023.
“Modernizing Mizrahanut: Oriental Studies and Early Israeli Diplomacy,” 39th Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS). New York, June 2023.
“Philology on Camera: The 1956 Expedition to Southern Sinai and Israeli Humanities in the Early State Era,” Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) 54th Annual Conference. Boston, December 2022.
“Home and Away: Jewish Return to Germany after 1945 in Family Photographs,” A New Look at German-Jewish History through Photography, international conference, Leo Baeck Institute London, German Historical Institute London and the Richard Koebner Minerva Center. London, October 2022 (invited).
“Studying Arabic in Hebrew? Jews, Arabs and German Oriental Studies in Interwar Jerusalem,” European and Arab Linguistic Endeavours and Exchanges in Interwar Europe (1898-1948): Teaching and Learning Arabic, HOLLT: History of Language Learning and Teaching workshop. Leiden, June 2022.
“The Diplomacy of Israeli Oriental Studies – The Early Years,” Jewish Questions and the Global South: Between Sovereignty and Human Rights, international conference, The Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights. Jerusalem, May 2022.
“Making a Hebrew University: Ignaz Goldziher, Zionism, and Oriental Studies in Jerusalem,” Ignaz Goldziher and his Correspondents: Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. Göttingen, November 2021 (online).
“German Heritage as Common Ground: Oriental Studies in Palestine and the Question of Jewish-Muslim Relations, 1926–1948,” 2nd Parkes Institute International Summer Graduate Seminar: Cultural Heritage and Jewish/non-Jewish Relations. Southampton, July 2021 (online).
“An Orientalist and a Gentleman: L.A. Mayer and the British-Arab-Jewish Triangle,” From Europe to Mount Scopus: The Beginnings of Archaeology and Islamic Art Scholarship at the Hebrew University, Yad Ben-Zvi. Jerusalem, February 2021 (invited; online).