Past members

I received my BA from Marmara University, Faculty of Theology, and completed both my MA and PhD in History of Religions at Sakarya University. My master’s thesis focused on “The Principles of Faith According to Maimonides”, while my doctoral dissertation examined the concepts of God, the universe, and the human being in the Sefer ha-Zohar.

Initially trained in Hebrew/Aramaic grammar and rabbinic literature, I earned a bi-nationally supervised PhD from the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris and Goethe University, Frankfurt working on the medieval fluid text corpus of Pirqa de-Rabbenu ha-Qadosh from the Cairo Genizah. While writing my PhD thesis, I was simultaneously employed as a Research Associate at the Seminar for Jewish studies in Frankfurt where I taught Hebrew and Aramaic grammar, rabbinic literature as well as Jewish medieval history to undergraduate and graduate levels. Having been initiated into manuscripts early on during my studies, pursuing this interest finally led me to Paris, consequently my research interests mainly revolve around manuscript studies, book history, social history and research methodologies, as well as theory formation. My current post-doc project‚ ‘Medieval Jewish Literacy Beyond the Elite: Popular Ethical Books From the Cairo Genizah‘ deals with medieval popular ethical texts, which I am using as a lens to investigate the question of medieval Jewish urban literacy through the application of methods known from Sociology.

I am a graduate student in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. I am interested in foreign languages and cultures. My main focus is Arabic, with a secondary specialisation in Hebrew, and I am interested both in the languages and the cultures of the countries where they are spoken. I am particularly interested in modern aspects of these topics – for example, Arabic media, both more traditional newspapers but also social media – but have an additional interest in what might be considered “older” literature, such as Arabic travel reports and adab literature.

I am an undergraduate student of Middle Eastern Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. During the academic year 2021–2022, I studied abroad at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. At LMU, I work as a student tutor for Modern Hebrew, supporting the beginners’ classes, especially with questions regarding grammar.

I am a Student Assistant on the project “Beyond Conflict and Coexistence. Entangled History of Jewish-Arab Relations”. As an undergraduate student of Religious Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, my academic interest lies in the interdependence of religion and society with a specific focus on the material reality of everyday life. In my studies I concentrate on Muslim cultures and their relation to European thought, as well as their expression in art and architecture.

I am currently in the BA program in Near and Middle East Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. The first relevant regional language I started learning was Arabic, the second is Hebrew. My interest in the Middle East was sparked in 2019, when visiting the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and first coming into contact with the hospitality and diverse culture of a Middle Eastern nation. Since then I have been in love with the Arabic language, the cultures connected to it, and most of all, the people living in and coming from the region. Because of this, I am trying to develop a skill set that allows me to do research – not so much about the big political and historical developments (although knowledge about them is needed, of course) – but about the people themselves and how they live. Most recently I’ve become interested in the material culture and media practices of the Arab world in general, and also more specifically in Iraqi Kurdistan. Since February 2022, I have been working as a student assistant, responsible for administrative tasks.

I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, researching interfaith exchange in the intellectual history of Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew. In 2021, I completed a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from Cambridge as a member of Corpus Christi College. Previously, I earned a BA in Near Eastern Languages and Religious Studies and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. I am also a Research Associate at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, where I study Arabic and Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, papermaking, and the history of printing.

I am a student and assistant at the Institute of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, where I’m currently enrolled for my master’s program. My interests cover several areas, however I dedicated myself specifically to the topic of modern-day terrorism in the Middle East during my bachelor studies. Other interests include the Arab language and its multiple dialects, religious coexistence during the Middle Ages, and Arabic documents outside the context of the Middle East (in particular, letters written in Arabic by a small group of enslaved African Muslims in the Americas).

Modern Hebrew and Arabic are the languages I have learned at the Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich. This enables me to combine different fields of study. I am especially interested in the contact between religions, languages, and people. For example, such forms of contact or expressions and results thereof include Jewish receptions of Islam, Judeo-Arabic as the main language spoken in Jewish communities in the Middle Ages, and the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants to Eretz Israel/Palestine at the end of the 19th century and their encounter with local Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.