University / institution contact details
Position: Post Doctoral Researcher/Research Associate
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Evangelisch-theologische Fakultät
Liebermeisterstr. 12
Tübingen
72076
Germany
Teaches (T) and/or researches (R) in:
1. Bible and Related Literature: TR
4: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: R
2. History of the Jewish People: TR
10: Second Temple period: R
Late Antiquity: TR
15: Regional and National (i.e. in North Africa, Greece, Eastern Europe, Germany, Middle East, Spain, India, South America, United States, etc): R
Local (e.g. the Jews of Canterbury, the Jews of Kovno, etc): TR
Archaeology: TR
Epigraphy: TR
Historiography: TR
3. Religion and Religious Movements: TR
Jewish religion - general: TR
Rabbinic Judaism: TR
Sectarianism in antiquity, including Gnosticism and Samaritan studies: TR
Comparative Religion: TR
32: Liturgy and prayer: R
4. Jewish Thought and Philosophy: TR
36: Jewish Mysticism: R
5. Rabbinic Literature: TR
38: Early (including Talmud, Mishnah, Midrash): R
6. Literature (other than Biblical and Rabbinic): TR
Ancient (including Hellenistic): TR
49: Literary criticism: R
8. Art, Architecture and Performing Arts: TR
Art (including iconography): TR
Architecture (including synagogues): TR
Description
Although the topic of my doctoral research project was not related to Jewish Studies, the projects I have and will embark on in future, are. During a visiting fellowship at Aarhus University, Denmark, I have been working on a project exploring concepts of Jewish (and Christian) ideas of community and identity in light of the shifting role of religion in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba war, with particular focus on the Jewish communities in Rome. Another research focus is the Testament of Levi and Hekhalot literature, where I scrutinise how these texts could be read as an attempt to redefine Jewish identity after the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Furthermore, I study Jerome and his Jewish network in Rome and the East. In these projects I use a new methodology which picks up ideas developed at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt (\'Lived Ancient Religion\'), and UrbNet at Aarhus (\'urban religion\'), as well as ideas and insights from the Aarhus-Nottingham-led group \'CAARE\' (which tests out the combination of cognitive science with the study of ancient religion). At the moment I am a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for ancient Judaism in Tübingen, where I teach about and study Jewish groups in the later Roman Empire, explore patterns of group formation, identity, the phenomenon of patronage, and competition between individual religious agents claiming these groups.
From a personal perspective I am also interested in contemporary Jewish Studies, and I had developed an extra-curricular seminar series for Durham Arts & Humanities undergraduates on \"God on Trial: thinking God after Auschwitz,\" which aimed to introduce students to diverse Jewish perspectives on how to \'think God\' after the atrocities of the Shoah. Not entirely unrelated, I am currently in the process of translating for friends (from the original Dutch) some documents and pamphlets concerning the Jews of Edam.
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