Board members

Prof. Dan Diner

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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.

Read Less

Prof. Dr. Silvia Jonas

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.

Read Less

Prof. Stefanie Middendorf

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).

Read Less

Prof. Maren R. Niehoff

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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).

Read Less

Prof. Christof Rapp

Chairperson

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.

Read Less

Prof. Hartmut Rosa

Website

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.

Read Less

Prof. Tamir Sheafer

Rector, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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.

Read Less

Prof. Dr. Stefan Stolte

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.

Read Less