EAJS Conference Grant Program in Jewish Studies
Report
British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies Annual Conference 2026
Birkbeck, University of London | July 2026
Organiser/BIAJS president: Ben Gidley, Birkbeck
The theme of our annual conference was “Space and place in Jewish studies”, a theme designed to be broad and capacious enough to engage our members across a wide range of disciplines, while creating a coherent conversation. The call for papers was as follows:
“there is no thing that has not its place.” — Pirkei Avot 4:3
For 2026, the theme of the BIAJS annual conference is space and place. Since ancient times, these concepts have been central to Jewish life and thought. Spaces and places can be real or imaginary, micro or macro, shared or separated, boundaried or porous, safe or hostile: the ark, the sukkah, the mikveh, the genizah, the kibbutz, the eruv, the Temple, the concentration camp, the Uganda plan, Babylonian exile, the occupied territories, Eretz Yisrael, di goldene medine, Sepharad, Yiddishland, the heavens and the underworld… From biblical narratives rooted in specific geographies, to sacred architecture and urban neighbourhoods, to diasporic movements and reimagined homelands, Jews have continually negotiated their relationship to space – physical, textual, social, political, and symbolic. Spaces and places are not neutral containers for Jewish life; they shape, reshape and are shaped by Jewish life and practices. How can attention to place and the spatial animate Jewish studies?
We welcome proposals that engage with this theme from any disciplinary, methodological, or chronological perspective. Although BIAJS conferences are always open to panels and papers outside of the main theme, this particular theme allows for many strands of inquiry, including but not limited to:
- Maps and cartographies in Jewish history
- Biblical, Talmudic and Rabbinic constructions of sacred and profane space
- Jewish cosmologies
- Pilgrimage, exile, and homeland
- Ritual spaces
- Space and place in Judaic law and philosophy
- A people without land? Diaspora, exile, transnationalism, rootless cosmopolitans
- A land without people? Zion, settlement, colony, homeland
- Jewish urbanism and spatial segregation (shtetls, ghettos, quarters…)
- The gendering of Jewish space
- Sites of memory and commemoration
- Field sites in Jewish ethnography or Biblical archaeology
- Imagined geographies in literature, film, music and art
- Spaces of leisure and culture (ballrooms, taverns, clubs, cafes…)
- Digital and virtual spaces of Jewish identity
- Mainstream and marginal spaces
- Spaces of antisemitism
The conference takes place in London, a global metropolis with a rich Jewish history, multiple diasporic connections, a wealth of interesting Jewish spaces, and several institutions dedicated to the study of Jewish life and history and of the Holocaust. We will be including opportunities to engage with and visit a number of these spaces as part of the conference.
The conference was held in in the shadow of a wave of arson and other attacks on Jewish targets in the city, and we had some concerns about security. We paid for additional external security throughout the conference in addition to the internal security that is standard. We also avoided publicly sharing precise venue details, and did not include participant affiliations on any materials shared online or on paper or on name badges. At the same time, we were keen to remain welcoming and to avoid an overly securitised atmosphere or to police attendance in an obtrusive or exclusive way.
The conference had 211 participants and 190 contributions (papers, or workshops, roundtable contributions, responses, screenings, walks/tours, some co-authored, although some participants made more than one contribution. Countries represented include: the UK, US, Israel, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Romania and Argentina. Unfortunately, our contributor from Georgia did not receive a UK entry visa in time to participate.
The final programme is below. The sessions marked as “Papers” were based on individual paper submissions grouped together thematically by the conference committee (we were pleased at how coherently assembled almost all of these turned out to be), while those marked as “Panels” were proposed collectively. We were pleased at the high number of sessions with more dialogical formats – e.g. round tables and conversations. The conference also included a walking tour of the Jewish refugee history of Bloomsbury led by the Association for Jewish Refugees (AJR), a screening of oral history films made by AJR, tour of the Wiener Library, and contributions by non-academic researchers and others based in communal organisations and the heritage sector. To maximise dialogue and to make room for an unprecedented number of contributions, we avoided big plenary events and keynote speakers. Although there were more parallel sessions than we often have, almost all were well attended and included lively conversation.
Another striking feature of the conference was the prominence of early career scholars: we had particularly high numbers of graduate student contributions that were very high quality (including at least two excellent Masters student contributions from Cardiff, Concordia University and from UCEMA University in Argentina and even one exceptional undergraduate presenter from Bar-Ilan University) and postdocs (including several Rothschild Foundation Europe scholars). EAJS funding enabled the participation of 11 early career scholars from European universities, including one Masters student about to start a PhD, and an equal mix of PhD and postdoctoral scholars. We prioritised applicants based in countries within the EAJS geographical area.
In addition to the conference proceedings, we held the BIAJS AGM as well as a meeting of UK Jewish studies centre directors, led by Warwick’s Anna Hajkova. At the AGM, along with other business items, we were delighted to be able to announce our annual BIAJS prizes as follows:
Book prize (Judging committee: Meron Piotrkowski, Aaron Hornkohl and Zuleika Rodgers)
Winner: Joseph Scales, Galilean Spaces of Identity: Judaism and Spatiality in Hasmonean and Herodian Galilee (Brill, 2024).
Honourable mention: Suzanna Millar, Animals, Power, and Intersectionality in the Books of Samuel (OUP, 2026)
Student essay prize (Judging committee: Lindsey Davidson, Sonia Gollance and Hannah Ewence)
Undergraduate: Dov Forman, UCL: “Understanding Israel Zangwill’s Turn to Zionism”. The panel were very impressed by the quality and engagement with primary sources alongside sophisticated textual analysis in Dov’s dissertation. (Nominating supervisor: Michael Berkowitz.)
Postgraduate: Abigail Glickman, Cambridge: “Reinterpreting reuse: a holistic approach to T-S 20.47.” The panel were very impressed by the quality and engagement with primary sources matched by sophisticated codicological and palaeographical discussion in Abigail’s essay on a misunderstood Genizah manuscript leaf. (Nominating supervisor: Benjamin Outhwaite.)
Both student prize winners were present to accept their awards in person.
We aimed for an inclusive ethos. No distinction was made between senior scholars and early career scholars in the allocation of slots. Titles were not included on name badges. Independent and retired scholars and those with affiliations to non-academic organisations (including artists, curators, education consultants, museum and gallery workers, a Sofer STa”M, a podcaster, and others) were welcomed. The conference was fully wheelchair-accessible. Induction loops were made available and used. Participants were given the opportunity to request certified kosher catering (all other catering was strictly vegetarian) and was provided at no extra cost.
As detailed in the final programme below, which includes contributors’ names, we had a number of strands, broadly organised in terms of: ancient history, archaeology, Biblical studies, religion and theology (including important sessions on ritual space, religious cartographies and textual spaces, across several time periods); arts and literature (including sessions on fashion, film, music and photography); history (representing every time period); and social sciences (including sociology and anthropology). A huge range of disciplines were represented, including art history, criminology, law, linguistics, philosophy, and utopian studies.
A number of significant and productive threads unfolded across the three days, including, but not limited to:
- Jewish urbanism: With a number of papers responding directly to the CfP, we were able to assemble a series of three excellent sessions on Jewish urbanism, with scholars from a range of disciplines using a variety of innovative methodologies (from architectural analysis to quantitative digital humanities research with large archival datasets) to look at Jewish settlement and spatial integration.
- Gender and sexuality: Building on the specific focus of our 2024 conference, we had strong sessions on gender and sexuality, including historiographical panels – on women in internationalism and on in the emergence of Holocaust survivor narratives archival research and a practical workshop gender and sexuality in the archive – and social scientific, theological and literature panels (with papers on masculinity as well as on women’s experiences).
- De-centring Anglo-Jewry: As is common with BIAJS conferences, innovative work was presented on Anglo-Jewish history, but this year had some especially important papers on peripheral and colonial dimensions of this story (with strong contributions by scholars from Leeds university, next year’s BIAJS conference hosts). We had one panel session on Jewish Ireland, a topic that BIAJS is keen to make more visible in its programming.
- Beyond Ashkenormativity? We also had rich content on transnational and transimperial Sephardi/Mizrahi, Ladino and Indian Ocean Jewish lives, as well as a roundtable on ethnic diversity and racism within Anglo-Jewry that highlighted Jews of colour.
- Yiddish diasporism: A number of productive panels showed that research on and in Yiddish is thriving in our field.
- Jewish ethnography: The UK Jewish Ethnography Network, established as a result of our 2023 conference, and bringing together people working on Jewish ethnography based at UK and Irish universities or doing research with UK and Irish Jewish populations, hosted three roundtable sessions showcasing ethical and methodological challenges in dark times.
- Biblical, Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish thought: We had a series of strong interdisciplinary panels on this topic, including on Saadya Gaon. This stream featured the strong presence of colleagues at Talpiot College of Education.
- Israeli history: We had a particularly significant series of panels and paper sessions exploring different aspects of Yishuv and Israeli history, with particular focus on the early years of the state, involving both established and doctoral scholars from Israel and the diaspora.
The conference benefitted from the active engagement and kind support of a number of the Jewish studies centres in Bloomsbury and across London, in particular the Leo Baeck Institute London and the Wiener Library. With the support of BIAJS events officer, Sonia Gollance, we provided participants with an exciting set of possible Jewish-related cultural activities to experience during their time in London.
The conference engaged some community organisations. We heard presentations about the Limmud archive and publicised Limmud’s new work to showcase Jewish studies scholarship. The valuable presence of the Association of Jewish Refugees has already been mentioned above. Museums in Manchester, Singapore, Germany, and Canada participated. We also had registered participants from rabbinical colleges, the American Jewish Committee and the general public.
We will build on the conference in a number of ways in our future annual conferences: building the network of UK and Irish Jewish studies centres that met for the first time, sustaining the Jewish Ethnography Network, rebuilding our Antisemitism Working Group, building in more structured activities for Early Career Scholars, and exploring the use of hybrid formats to engage scholars in Ukraine and elsewhere and to make the events more inclusive. The journal European Judaism has approached us about using panels from the conference to build some special issues of the journal. Next year’s BIAJS conference will be hosted by the University of Leeds 28-30 June, with the theme “Rethinking Pluralism and Peripheries in Jewish Studies”, and 2028’s by the University of Cambridge, with the intention of holding a conference in the Republic of Ireland and/or Northern Ireland the following year.
Finally, a personal thank you from the out-going president to all the chairs listed below, to Lindsey Davidson, Mia Spiro, Jaclyn Granick and the rest of the BIAJS board for their active support for the organisation, but especially to Anoushka Alexander-Rose, to Martin Saps with help during registration, and above all to Chris Fray in the Birkbeck events team.