The OCHJS hosts a number of visiting academics each year through the following 3 status options.
Visiting Fellows
Visiting Fellowships through the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies are available for senior scholars wishing to join one of the Oxford Seminars in Advanced Jewish Studies or to conduct research in rare Jewish languages through the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages Visiting Fellowship programme.
Current Visiting Fellows
There are no Visiting Fellows at this time.
Visiting Scholars
OCHJS 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 OCHJS’s premises at the Clarendon Institute, located in central Oxford. 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@orinst.ox.ac.uk.
Current Visiting Scholars
Dr Carmen Caballero-Navas
Carmen Caballero-Navas (PhD 2000, Koret Jewish Studies Publications Program Award) is Senior Lecturer of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Granada, Spain. She was a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a postdoctoral fellow at The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.
Her research interests include the medieval Hebrew textual production on women’s health care; Jewish women’s medical practice; medicine among medieval Jews of southern Europe; Jewish debates on sexual difference and the construction of meanings for the female body; and medieval Jewish knowledge and practice of magic. On all these topics, she has published extensively.
Her current project, ‘Medicine Among Jews Before the Plague, 1197–1347’, focuses on Hebrew medical texts produced during the period between the end of the 12th century and the middle of the 14th century. In particular, she intends to study a group of codices that bear the title Kobeṣ bi-refu᾿ah (Anthology of Medicine) and include medical texts that have been translated from Arabic or Latin, or (apparently) originally written in Hebrew, and which have neither been edited nor received much attention from scholars.
Dr Hila Dayfani
Hila Dayfani completed her PhD in Biblical Studies at Bar-Ilan University with a thesis that concerns the contribution of variants due to graphic similarity to the textual criticism of the Pentateuch. Her research interests include the study of the Pentateuch; Biblical and Post-Biblical Wisdom Literature; Dead Sea Scrolls; and Paleography.
Professor Aaron Koller
Aaron Koller is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University, where he studies Semitic languages. He is the author of Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (JPS/University of Nebraska Press, 2020) and Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014), among other books, and the editor of five more. Aaron previously served as a Visiting Professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and held research fellowships at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research and the Hartman Institute. He is spending the 2022-2023 year as a Cook-Crone Bye-Fellow at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He lives in Queens, NY with his partner, Shira Hecht-Koller, and their children.
Dr Ilan Moradi
Ilan Moradi is Lecturer of Philosophy at the Beijing Normal University. Born in Jerusalem to a Persian family, he was first educated at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied philosophy and Classical Studies (BA). He completed his Master’s studies in philosophy at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Barnes (FBA), and a second Master’s in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University Paris VIII (France). His PhD dissertation on Aristotle’s theory of substance in the Metaphysics and in the Categories was written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Holmer Steinfath at the University of Göttingen (Germany).
Dr Shira Stav
Dr Shira Stav is a scholar of Hebrew literature, a poet, a translator, and a literary critic. She is also a senior lecturer in the department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. Her research areas are Comparative Literature and Hebrew Literature, Feminist Studies and Psychoanalysis. Her current project on Hebrew poetic memoirs deals with the turn to self-documentation in Israeli contemporary poetry. Stav is the author of Reconstructing Daddy: Fathers and Daughters in Modern Hebrew Poetry (2014, in Hebrew); The Return of the Absent Father: A New Reading of a Chain of Stories from the Babylonian Talmud (2022, together with Haim Weiss; University of Pennsylvania Press); and many journal articles. Stav is the editor of All the Lights Went out at Once: The Prose of Tirtza Atar (2010) and of Pain in Flesh and Blood: Essays on Malady, Suffering and Indulgence of the Body (2013, together with Oreet Meital). Stav has been a research fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia; Taube Center at Stanford University; and the Jewish Studies program at University of California, Santa Cruz. In addition to her academic work, Stav translated and edited wide collections of poems by the praised American poets Sharon Olds (The Floor of our Life, 2017) and Ocean Vuong (soon to be published). Since 2005 Stav is a regular contributor of book reviews to the literary supplement of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and won the 2009 Bernstein Prize for literary criticism. She published two collections of poetry: Lashon Itit (Slow Tongue) in 2012 and Shrir Halev (Muscle of the Heart) in 2019. She won the 2007 Teva Award for young Hebrew poets and the 2013 Bernstein Prize for poetry. Her poems have been translated into English, German, French, and Arabic.
Dr Judith Weiss
Dr Judith Weiss is a Senior Lecturer at the Goldstein-Goren Department for Jewish Thought at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. She studies Kabbalah, with special focus on medieval Kabbalah and Renaissance Christian Kabbalah. She published three books on the Kabbalistic thought of Guillaume Postel, as well as articles on Jewish and Christian Kabbalah. Her current project deals with the non-Jewish context in which early Sefirotic theology evolved.
Professor Tzahi Weiss
Tzahi Weiss is a Professor of Jewish Mysticism and Hebrew Literature at the Open University of Israel and the former Dean of Research at the university. He is the author of numerous studies including four books: Sefer Yeṣirah and its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices (Penn Press 2018); Cutting the Shoots: The Worship of The Shekhinah in the World of Early Kabbalistic Literature (The Hebrew University Magnes Press: Jerusalem 2015); Letters by which Heaven and Earth were Created: The Origins and the Meanings of the Perceptions of Alphabetic Letters as Independent Units in Jewish Sources of Late Antiquity (Bialik Press 2014 ); and The Death of the Shekhinah in S.Y. Agnon’s Oeuvre (Bar Ilan University Press 2009). He is the head of the ‘Commentaries to the Ten Sefirot’ research project, funded by the Israeli Science Foundation. His coming book will be dedicated to the historical contexts of the emergence of the Sefirotic Literature (Kabbalah) in the early 13th century.
Dr Emma Zohar
Emma Zohar completed her PhD (2019) at the department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University. In her PhD dissertation, Zohar focused on the Jewish non-Zionists educational institutions in interwar Poland. She served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Center for History of Emotions, Berlin (2019-2021), and as the NAWA visiting lecturer at the Copernicus University, Torun, Poland (2022). Zohar’s current project “Within the Pale of Pleasure: Polish Jews and the Pursuit of Happiness (1918-1939)” deals with the everyday life practices of Polish Jewry in independent Poland. The research analyzes the consumer and leisure habits of the Polish-Jewish community in contrast to its image as the epitome of Jewish suffering. Her research interests focus on Eastern European Studies, Jewish History, History of Emotions, Gender, and Cultural History.
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 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
There are no Junior Visiting Scholars at this time.