Visiting Academics

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 Yogev Elbaz
Salo & Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellow in Jewish History

I completed my BA in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, and my MA in Israel Studies, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I received my PhD from the Hebrew University with a dissertation on Israel’s Intervention in Lebanon (1969–1982), which was awarded the Alex Berger Prize for Excellence. In the last two years, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

My research focuses on Israel’s clandestine relations in the region, the Middle Eastern interstate system and Israeli mythology. I founded the ‘Forum for Israel Studies’ at the Hebrew University and serves as scientific editor of Yesodot, a peer-reviewed journal of war history.

My current project at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, The Forgotten Periphery: Israel and South Arabia, 1962–1976, examines Israeli clandestine diplomacy in Yemen, the South Arabian Federation and Oman, focusing on Israeli connections with British officials and mercenaries during the decline of the British Empire in the area.

Dr Piergabriele Mancuso
Yishai Shahar Visiting Fellow in Jewish Art History

I hold a BA and MA in Oriental Languages, an MA in Music (viola) and a PhD in Jewish Studies from UCL. Since 2013, I have served as Director of the Eugene Grant Jewish Program at the Medici Archive Project. I am a senior lecturer in history, history of music and Jewish Studies, and I have taught at various universities in Italy and the United States.

I have published extensively on Italian Jewish history, medieval Hebrew philology, Jewish music and ethnomusicology. In 2017, I launched the Ghetto Mapping Project, a major research initiative aimed at virtually reconstructing the ancient Jewish ghetto of Florence based on archival and textual evidence. I was also co-curator, together with Alice Legé and Sefy Hendler, of the exhibition ‘The Jews, the Medici, and the Ghetto of Florence – History, Identity, Culture, and Segregation’ (Florence, Palazzo Pitti – Gallerie degli Uffizi, October 2023 – January 2024).

While in Oxford, I will be conducting research on Jona Ostiglio, a 17th-century Jewish painter born in the ghetto of Florence and the first professional Jewish painter in the history of Italian art.

Professor Dr Susanne Marten-Finnis
Leverhulme Emeritus Visiting Fellow

I am a Professor of Applied Linguistics (Emerita) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. I also hold an appointment at the University of Bremen and Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

In my publications, I explore the nexus between Jewish literary activities and European thought. My focus is on the multilingual Jewish press in the European borderlands and the countries of former Jewish residency and migration.

Other research topics of mine include Jewish agency in post-1917 Russian Emigration and the Sephardic contribution to the geopolitics of transition in Early Modern Poland.

Dr Elly Moseson
OSRJL Visiting Fellow in Rare Jewish Languages

I hold a BA in English Literature from Columbia University and a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University. I have held research and teaching positions at the University of Hamburg, Tel Aviv University, Columbia University, Queens College, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. My research interests include early modern Jewish movements and literatures, the cultural and political functions of texts, as well as the intersection of literature, psychoanalysis and religion. I am currently working on a monograph on the role of literature in the formation of the Hasidic movement and a series of studies on dreams and magic in Jewish culture.

Dr Bernardino Pitocchelli
OSRJL Visiting Fellow in Rare Jewish Languages

I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Université de Namur, and an adjunct professor in Romance Philology at the Università di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’.
I completed my studies in Romance philology and linguistics at the Università di Napoli ‘Federico II’, and I have carried out research stays in France (Nantes, Paris), Spain (Madrid) and Canada (Montréal).

My research interests lie in the Gallo-Romance and Italo-Romance linguistic and literary traditions. In the former domain, I have worked on travel literature and French verse historiography from the 13th-14th centuries; in the latter, I have studied Italo-Romance biblical translations written in Hebrew script between the Middle Ages and the early modern period.

I have recently published a new critical edition of the Iter de Londinio in Terram Sanctam by Matthew Paris (Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Venice, 2024), and I have co-edited a volume on Judeo-Italian textuality with Laura Minervini (Studi sui testi giudeo-italiani del medioevo e della prima età moderna, Strasbourg, ELiPhi, 2025). A monograph is also currently forthcoming (La Bibbia giudeo-italiana. Edizione e studio linguistico dei libri di Osea e Sofonia, Strasbourg, ELiPhi).
My fellowship in Oxford will focus on the study of Judeo-Italian biblical translations through a project entitled ‘Translating Bereshit: Material Studies Towards an Edition of the Judeo-Italian Genesis’.

Dr Camilla Recalcati

I am a Postdoctoral Kreitman Fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Bar-Ilan University. I completed my BA and MA in Classics at the Catholic University of Milan and earned my PhD in Theology and Biblical Studies from UCLouvain in 2024.

My research focuses on the Septuagint, especially its linguistic features and socio-cultural contexts. I study the origins of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and the intellectual, social and multilingual environments in which it emerged. More broadly, I explore how the Septuagint reflects processes of interpretation and cultural negotiation within Jewish communities of the Hellenistic Mediterranean world.

I am the author of The Egyptian Background of the Septuagint: Lexical Items in Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus (Brepols, 2026) and several peer-reviewed articles. I am currently preparing a commentary on the Septuagint of Jonah for the Society of Biblical Literature Commentary Series and co-chair the research unit Papyrology and the Biblical World: The Documentary Context of the Septuagint, the New Testament and Beyond within the European Association of Biblical Studies.

At the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, I will examine how Jewish communities regarded as more peripheral in Ptolemaic Egypt might have contributed to the linguistic and cultural milieu in which the Septuagint emerged, drawing especially on papyrological evidence.

Dr Dafna Ben Zvi

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Culture and Creative Arts at Sapir College. For the past five years, I served as Head of the Department and established a unique undergraduate academic program, the ‘Creators’ Track’, which integrates artistic practice with theoretical research. I myself combine philosophical, linguistic and psychoanalytic research with my work as a children’s author and poet, and my books have garnered awards and been translated internationally.

My doctoral dissertation, written at the School of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, was dedicated to the movement of repetition. In it, I developed the concept of ‘creative repetition’, through which the subject realizes freedom and comes into contact with a forgotten truth of existence. My research has been published in leading journals, including Ma’arag: The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis.

To date, I have published five acclaimed children’s books. My book Snoozie, Sunny, and So-So (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2009) won the Ministry of Culture Prize for Best Children’s Book as well as the Israel Center for Libraries and Literature Prize, and was translated into Arabic. The English edition was published by Enchanted Lion Books. My poetry collection Poems for Amalia (Am Oved, 2012) was released as a musical album and adapted into a stage show that continues to enjoy great success.

The project I will pursue during my stay at Oxford likewise integrates research with creative work. Through close readings of central figures in classical Israeli children’s literature, I will develop a theoretical framework concerning the nature of children’s literature in particular and poetic language in general. At the core of my research lies the claim that poetic language is rooted in pre-linguistic and pre-symbolic dimensions of language, and that the suspension of the reality principle in such texts accounts for their liberating and healing qualities. Through an exploration of the concept of ‘hospitality’ and its Jewish roots, I aim to illuminate the ethical and political wisdom embedded in these writers’ work, a wisdom grounded in openness and receptivity to the other, which feels particularly urgent in Israeli society after October 7^th.

Dr Emily Rose

I am 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, I have taught British, European History and Jewish Studies at five universities.

My project at OCHJS examines ‘Expulsion (1290), “Re-admission” (1656), Celebration (1906): Jews of England and the Construction of a National Identity’.

My 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. 

I have also published on Christian-Jewish relations in late Antiquity, and on European politics and finance in the early Modern world. My articles have appeared in Parliamentary History, the Huntington Library Quarterly, JEGP, Studies in the Age of Chaucer and Viator among others. My essay on ‘Blood Libel, Crusades and Popular Violence’ appeared in The Cambridge Companion to the History of Antisemitism (2022).