The OCHJS hosts a number of visiting academics each year through the following 3 status options.
Visiting Fellows
Visiting Fellowships of the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies are available for postdoctoral researchers and senior scholars through our Oxford Seminars in Advanced Jewish Studies programme, which hosts four streams of Visiting Fellowships: Salo & Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellowships in Jewish History, René & Susanne Braginsky Visiting Fellowships in Manuscript Studies, OSRJL Visiting Fellowships in Rare Jewish Languages and Yishai Shahar Visiting Fellowships in Jewish Art History. Visiting Fellows are invited to participate in and contribute to the OCHJS’s academic activities (all of which are conducted in English), given shared office space at the Clarendon Institute, issued individual University Cards and receive honoraria. They may be invited to present a paper relating to their research should a suitable opportunity arise. Calls for applications are posted each academic year; to see if any are currently open, click the button below.
Current Visiting Fellows
Professor Golda Akhiezer
Salo & Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellow in Jewish History
I am currently a member of the academic staff of the Department of Jewish History at Ariel University and the Director of the Center for Research on Jewish Communities of the Caucasus and Central Asia at the same institution. The primary focus of my research is Jewish historical thought, with particular emphasis on Karaism, Jewish-Christian and Karaite-Rabbanite polemics and the study of Jewish manuscripts.
I earned my PhD in Jewish History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a dissertation on Karaite historical thought (2008), after which I attended post-doctoral studies at Boston University. My academic career began with my involvement in research at the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East. Subsequently, I held a teaching position at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The theme of my project at the OCHJS is ‘Jewish intellectual life in the Black Sea region–history and textual exchanges’. This research aims to provide a reconstructed account of the intellectual life of both Rabbanite and Karaite Jewish communities in that area, focusing on the 14th to early 16th centuries and such locales as Byzantium and the Golden Horde. I aspire to shed light on patterns of interaction between Karaite and Rabbanite Jews residing in the Black Sea region and in other Jewish centres throughout the Mediterranean region and beyond. The study will examine the exchange of texts and scientific knowledge, as well as practices related to the consumption of books and the content of private and communal Jewish libraries.
Professor Noah Hacham
Salo & Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellow in Jewish History
I am a historian of the Jewish people during the Hellenistic-Roman period (the Second Temple, Mishnaic and Talmudic periods). My doctorate was dedicated to the Third Book of Maccabees, and my research focuses on Diaspora Judaism in the Hellenistic-Roman period, particularly the Jewish community of Egypt, as well as rabbinic literature as a historical source. My Hebrew translation and commentary on the Third Book of Maccabees is nearing completion.
In recent years, I have been working together with Professor Tal Ilan on the new Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (CPJ), a collection of papyri documenting Jews, Judaism and related subjects. This project is a continuation of the three-volume corpus compiled by Victor Tcherikover and his colleagues, which was published more than sixty years ago. In recent years, two volumes of the CPJ have been published, dedicated to the Ptolemaic period (2020) and the early Roman period (2022). Currently, Ilan and I are working on the third volume, which covers the period from 117 CE to the end of the seventh century CE. The preparation of this volume lays the foundation for my research project ‘The Hidden Era: The History of Egyptian Jewry from the Jewish Revolt to the Muslim Conquest (117-641 CE)’.
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Judaism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In February 2025, I completed a three-and-a-half-year tenure as head of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies at the same university.
Dr Dean Irwin
Visiting Fellow in Anglo-Jewish Medieval History
My doctoral work, at Canterbury Christ Church University, examined the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities between 1194 and 1275/6. Now, working outside of conventional academia, I pursue my many esoteric interests into medieval Anglo-Jewish history. This work is undertaken as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Lincoln and, now, Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (both in the historical diocese of Lincoln!).
At present, I am writing a book, under contract with Palgrave MacMillan, exploring Jews and Christians as Neighbours in the Towns of Medieval England (due 2027). Additionally, I am editing a volume of twelve essays on The Medieval Lincoln Jewry (Arc Humanities Press, due 2025), and co-editing Hebrew and Hebrew-Latin Documents from Medieval England, vol. 3, with Judith Olszowy-Schlanger. I speak regularly at national and international conferences, as well as organising panels, on all aspects of medieval Anglo-Jewish history, and have published a series of article length studies exploring acknowledgements of debt, the archae system, King John, and the social structure of the London Jewry. I also support community outreach programmes.
At the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, I co-convene a postgraduate seminar once a term with Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, looking at Medieval Anglo-Jewish Texts & History. Here we introduce postgraduate students to reading both Latin and Hebrew texts from medieval England. I also provide support to doctoral projects which fall within my area of specialism.
Dr Ilana Wartenberg
OSRJL Visiting Fellow in Rare Jewish Languages
I am the head of Italia Judaica at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Centre at Tel Aviv University. I am a specialist of medieval and early modern Hebrew science as well as the history of Hebrew as a language of science. My research project in Italia Judaica is devoted to mathematical and astronomical Hebrew treatises as well as philosophical glossaries from Renaissance Italy in which the vernacular and Latin play a central role, shedding new light on numerous facets stretching far beyond the scientific sphere.
Visiting Scholars
Visiting Scholars—senior scholars accepted by application to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies who come to Oxford to work on their current, independent research projects—are advised on how to apply for a Bodleian Readers Card to access the Bodleian Libraries as well as given access to shared office space in the Clarendon Institute. Visiting Scholars are invited and encouraged to attend and participate in the academic activities of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, all of which are conducted in English. They may be invited to present a paper relating to their research should a suitable opportunity arise.
Individuals wishing to be academic visitors at the University of Oxford and obtain a University Card may apply to be affiliated with the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES). For information, please email Trudi Pinkerton at trudi.pinkerton@ames.ox.ac.uk.
Current Visiting Scholars
Dr Menashe Anzi
I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. My research focuses on the history of Yemenite Jews and Jewish-Muslim relations in Islamic urban settings. My book, The Ṣanʿāʾnis: Jews in Muslim Yemen, 1872–1950 (2021, Zalman Shazar Center, in Hebrew), earned me the prestigious Ben-Zvi Institute Prize in 2022.
At the OCHJS, I will continue my research on Yemenite Jews in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea regions. This project introduces a new geographical framework for understanding the Yemenite Jewish diaspora, examining the connections between Jewish communities across the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and their interactions with both their places of origin and host societies. It highlights how these transregional ties—spanning commerce, migration and cultural exchange—helped shape a shared Jewish space and fostered a common Jewish identity in the region.
Dr Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli
I am a senior lecturer in Bar-Ilan University’s Sociology and Anthropology Department. My research fields of interest and specialization are text and society; ethnography of Jewish communities; anthropology of knowledge and learning; anthropology and sociology of religion and Judaism; anthropology of medical research; separatist communities; and ritual healing. I wrote articles on these subjects that were published in scientific forums in Israel and abroad. My book Encounters around the Text, Ethnography of Judaisms (2020) won the Bahat Grant for outstanding academic manuscripts for 2017. My research on ‘Lived Judaism in Israel: religious and spiritual experiences in a changing society’ (with Rachel Werczberger) won the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) Personal Research Grant (2020-2023). In 2021, the book The Power of Words: Anthropology of Jewish Textuality, which I edited together with Nissan Rubin, was published by Carmel Publishing.
In recent years, I have also been engaged in research that locates and examines cases of Undone Science. This term refers to research left unfunded or incomplete for financial, political, and/or other reasons. In addition, I am an editor of the ‘behevrat haadam’ website (בחברת האדם) on anthropology in Israel and the world, and of the project’s Facebook page, which has more than 10,000 followers.
Dr Emily Rose
E. M. Rose, MBA, PhD, is a scholar of Medieval and Early Modern Europe, whose work has been hailed as ‘a model of thoroughgoing historical scholarship presented to a general audience and should be studied by scholars who wish to bring the humanities to the public square’.
A graduate of Oxford with an Honours degree in Modern History, she previously was a Research Associate at the Department of History, Harvard University, and before that taught at five universities. Her project at OCHJS will examine ‘Jews in 17th-Century British Empire: Resettlement of Jews in Britain in Mid-Seventeenth Century’.
Rose’s first book, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford University Press, 2015) was named one of the ‘Ten Best History Books of the Year’ by the Sunday Times of London and described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘a landmark of historical research’. The American Historical Review called it ‘a significant achievement’ and the AJS Review described it as ‘a truly excellent book. It deserves to be read and studied by scholars in many if not all fields of medieval studies.’ It won the Ralph Waldo Emerson award from the Phi Beta Kappa Association and was awarded the 2017 Albert C. Outler Prize of the American Society for Church History for the best ecumenical church history monograph of the past two years.
Rose has also published on Christian-Jewish relations in late Antiquity, and on European politics and finance in the early modern world. Rose’s articles have appeared in Parliamentary History, the Huntington Library Quarterly and the Virginia Magazine of History, and are forthcoming in Maine History and Studies in the Age of Chaucer. Her essay on ‘Blood Libel, Crusades and Popular Violence’ appeared in The Cambridge Companion to the History of Antisemitism (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Her email address is em.rose@ames.ox.ac.uk.
Junior Visiting Scholars
Individuals advanced in their doctoral or postdoctoral work may apply for Junior Visiting Scholar status at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies to carry out their own independent research. Junior Visiting Scholars are invited to attend and participate in the events and activities of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (all of which are conducted in English) and will be advised as to how they may apply for a Bodleian Readers Card to access the Bodleian Library system. However, Junior Visiting Scholars are not permitted to participate in activities of the University of Oxford more broadly; those wishing to do so must apply for visiting student status separately through the University and at a cost.
Current Junior Visiting Scholars
Zhao Chenxi
I am currently a PhD student at the School of History, Zhengzhou University, China. I have been awarded a Zhengzhou University Scholarship which will support my academic research at the OCHJS.
My research interests include Modern Israeli history, the Israel-India relationship, contributions of Jewish civilisation, and Jewish philanthropy. So far, I have published two academic articles in Annual Report on Israel’s National Development (a series of books, one published each year by Social Sciences Academic Press, China) focusing on relations between Israel and the United Nations (published in 2023) and Israel-India innovation cooperation (published in 2024). In addition, I published the 2020, 2021 and 2022 ‘Chronologies of Israel’ in the same series.
Recently, I have been conducting research on the Israeli exhibition industry, particularly regarding technological innovation, focusing on topics such as the history of Expo Tel Aviv. The other topic of my current research is the ‘Jewish Phenomenon’, examining the contributions of Jewish people to world civilisation since the inception of the Nobel Prize.
At the OCHJS, I plan to conduct research on ‘The Study of the Philanthropy History of the Rothschild Family’. At the same time, I plan to participate in activities related to Hebrew language learning and research, and focus on acquiring foundational knowledge of Hebrew.
Rakefet Cohen-Anzi
I am a PhD student in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My dissertation, supervised by Professors Yfaat Weiss and Dan Porat, is titled ‘Imparting the Hebrew Language to Adults in Mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel, 1936–1955’. It examines the efforts of both the pre-state and state authorities to teach Hebrew to adult immigrants from the 1930s through the 1950s, highlighting the role of language in shaping national culture.
In 2022, I was a research fellow at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2024, I was awarded a fellowship from the Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, and in 2025, I am also a Leo Baeck Fellow of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.
My Master’s thesis focused on The Hebrew University’s involvement in adult education, and three articles based on my thesis research have been published in academic journals. My broader research interests include nation-building processes, the role of language in these processes and the transmission and implementation of educational knowledge.
Timea Crofony
I am a PhD candidate in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Charles University, Prague. My dissertation explores the negotiation of secular Jewish identities in contemporary Israel and the politics of desire. My academic interests lie at the intersection of gender, Jewish and Israel Studies, and I have published on topics such as women’s peace activism in Israel and Palestine and mechitza practices in feminist Orthodox Judaism.
I hold a Master’s degree in Law from the Faculty of Law, Charles University, and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University. Additionally, I hold an MPA in Research and Development. I have been a visiting student at Tel Aviv University and the University of Oxford. I am the recipient of several research grants and scholarships and am part of an international project focusing on Jewish, Muslim and Romani minorities in Europe. I also serve as a member of the Academic Council of the European Association of Israel Studies.
In addition to my academic work, I am a lawyer and an international trainer, lecturer and consultant specialising in gender equality, diversity and intersectionality.
Delia Del Prete
I am currently a PhD student at La Sapienza, University of Rome. My project aims to delineate the figure of Solomon within the work of Yoḥanan ben Yiṣhaq Alemanno. To this end, I am preparing a critical edition, with a translation and a study on the sources and reception of his work Ḥesheq Shelomo (‘The Passion of Solomon’), a mystical commentary on the Song of Songs commissioned by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
I hold a Master’s degree from La Sapienza University. Additionally, I received a Master’s degree in Jewish Studies and Jewish-Christian Relations from the Gregorian University in Rome.
My research interests focus on medieval and Renaissance Jewish texts and Jewish mysticism, particularly the Kabbalah current and Christian Kabbalah. In this regard, my previous research has investigated the Kabbalistic sources of ritual and performative theses in Pico della Mirandola’s 900 Theses and the reception of Judah Abravanel’s work, ‘Dialogues of Love’.