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: OCHJS-IHBMR Visiting Fellowships in Manuscript Studies, OSRJL Visiting Fellowships in Rare Jewish Languages, Salo and Jeannette Baron Visiting Fellowships in Jewish History 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 Dr Susanne Marten-Finnis
Leverhulme Emeritus Visiting Fellow
I am a Professor of Applied Linguistics (Emerita) at the University of Portsmouth. In my publications, I explore the nexus between Jewish literary activities and European thought. My focus is on the Jewish textual tradition in the European countries of former Jewish residency and migration. My academic career includes positions at Queens University Belfast, the Universities of Portsmouth and Bremen, besides visiting positions at the Technical University Berlin, Belarusian State University Minsk and the University of Heidelberg.
My present research focus, as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, is on geopolitics in the historical borderlands of Europe during a period of shifting power balance in Oriental trade. Recognizing the geographical nature of sixteenth-century Poland, I scrutinize the resettlement of Sephardic Jews in Zamość—a Renaissance-style city, founded in 1580. For further information on the project, see here.
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 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.
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’.
Dr Asher Suzin
I am a political scientist specializing in Ultra-Orthodox society and civil society in Israel. I completed my PhD at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa (2024), with a dissertation examining Ultra-Orthodox civil society organizations in Israel and focusing on questions of liberalism, democracy, modern Ultra-Orthodoxy and intersecting identities.
Following degrees from IDC Herzliya and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, my research has been published in prominent journals. Several papers stemming from my doctoral research are forthcoming in leading academic journals and explore themes of civil society development, religious identity and social change in Ultra-Orthodox communities.
As a Junior Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, I am researching contemporary Orthodox left-wing movements in Israel and analyzing their theological interpretations of power, redemption and sovereignty in the context of the Jewish democratic state. Through qualitative methods, including interviews and textual analysis, my research investigates how these organizations interpret traditional Jewish sources to form their political worldview, approach to messianism and relationship to religious Zionist perspectives.