​Rethinking Center and Periphery in the Abrahamic Religions​

Or Amir

Dr. Amir is an historian of medieval Islamic societies, and is especially interested in the social history of Sufism and the history of the Mamluk Sultanate. In his PhD dissertation, Amir studied the social role of Sufi shaykhs in 13th-14th centuries Egypt and Bilad al-Sham, and their relations with the Mamluk elite. He also studied the social and religious history of Palestine during the Mamluk period, as well as the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange and mobility in the post-Mongol Islamic world.

oramir123@gmail.com

https://huji.academia.edu/OrAmir

David Borabeck

Borabeck is a Rottenstreich Fellow PhD candidate in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a fellow in the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters.  

In his research, Borabeck discusses various relations between religion and nationality, citizenry and majority-minority dealings, through the prism of Israeli bureaucracy. His dissertation, "The Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Formation of Judaism and Islam in the State of Israel, 1948-1958", is being written under the supervision of Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin and Dr. Menashe Anzi.

Borabeck lives in Netivot and has three children.

davidiborabeck@gmail.com

https://bgu.academia.edu/DavidiBorabeck

Yuval Givon

Givon is a historian of the early modern period, specializing in the communication between Western Europe and China during the seventeenth century, particularly through Jesuit missionary networks. By focusing on the development of long-distance communication systems and webs of information in Asia and beyond, he examines questions related to the early-modern foundations of globalization, and the unique role that cross-cultural contacts played in this process. Yuval completed his Ph.D. in history at the Tel Aviv University School of Historical Studies. He is also an alumnus of international programs in Chinese studies at the University of Turin and Renmin University in Beijing, and a graduate of the Azrieli Foundation Fellows Program.​

yuvalgivon@gmail.com

https://telaviv.academia.edu/YuvalGivon

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Tafat Hacohen-Bick

Dr. Hacohen-Bick completed her PhD on the subject of theology and poetics in the poetry of Pinchas Sadeh, Yona Wallach, and Zelda Schneerson in the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Heksherim Institute at the department of Hebrew Literature in Ben-Gurion University, and teaches Hebrew literature at Achva college and at Ben-Gurion University in Eilat. In her current research she examines the poetic, social and theological functions of trash and filth within Hasidic and modern Hebrew literature as part of a broader research on ecopoetics.​

tafathacohen@gmail.com

https://bgu.academia.edu/tafathacohenhacohen

Ariel Seri-Levi

Dr. Seri-Levi is a biblical scholar, and his research deals with the ancient Israelite religion, biblical semantics, and the formation of the Pentateuch. He completed his doctoral dissertation on “Divine Anger and its Appeasement in the Pentateuch and its Sources" at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Seri-Levi is a lecturer at the David Yellin Academic College of Education and the Kerem Institute for Jewish Humanistic Education, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and a teaching fellow in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University.​

ariel.seri.levi@gmail.com

https://huji.academia.edu/ArielSeriLevi

Maya Shabbat

Maya Shabbat is a historian of modern Jewish history, specializing in the Jewish immigration from East to Central Europe during the end of the nineteenth century. Her research mainly focuses on the interactions among and between individuals and groups from different origins from Eastern Europe. In her research Imagining the Bildung she dealt with migration challenges and self-identity conflicts among immigrants originating from the periphery of the German speaking area to the Prussian cities during the nineteenth century. Her current research ‘Hinterzimmer Elite’: The Case of Hebrew Writers in Fin-de-Siècle Berlin deals with urban spatial questions and their influence on ideas within intellectual circles in Kaiserreich Germany. Shabbat completed her Ph.D. in Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, she is also a research fellow at Potsdam University.

maya.shabbat@gmail.com

Omer Shadmi

​​Shadmi is a PhD student at the Jewish thought department in Ben-Gurion University under the supervision of Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal. He is mainly interested in employing spatia​​l and geographical theories in the study of classic rabbinic literature and specifically the Babylonian Talmud. His current research continues the work began in his MA thesis (Hebrew Literature Department, Hebrew University) where he examined the Babylonian rabbinic genre of Landscape-midsrahim and focuses on Babylonian rabbinic representations of Mesopotamia and the Land of Israel. As part of this project, he is also working on a GIS-based database of Late Antique Mesopotamia.

shadmio@gmail.com ​

Michal Shalit-Kollender

Shalit-Kollender is a P.hD student in the Department of Art History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, under the supervision of Prof. Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby. Her research focuses on the iconographic narrative of Counter-Reformation women saints in Italian art.

Research Topic

Her Ph.D. dissertation Saint Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi (1566-1607) and Saint Catherine de' Ricci (1522-1590), in Italian art, deals with the forming of an iconographic narrative of two Counter-Reformation women saints. She addresses questions of power culture and religious center versus peripheral areas.

Micmic.sk@gmail.com​​