Academic Resume
During my high school years, I had better things to do than study. In my twenties, however, my intellectual interests exploded.
I started taking courses at the Open University in philosophy, history, and literature, and went on to complete a tour-guide course, which at the time covered a wide range of subjects related to the land. On the basis of my previous studies, I was admitted to the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed a BA in 2015. In 2020, I completed an MA thesis in the Department of Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University, after spending two semesters in the Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at University College London.
In December 2025, I received a PhD from the University of Haifa. During my doctoral studies, I was a research affiliate at the Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters (CSoC) and the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies, and a visiting scholar at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. I received several scholarships and awards:
- Negev Doctoral Fellowship (2020–2021)
- Bloom Scholarship (2022–2025)
- Conway Family Award (2024)
- AJS Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2024–2025)
- Dean’s Award for an Outstanding PhD Dissertation
Research projects
The Making of Rabbinic Babylonia: Spatial Readings in the Bavli (book)
I am currently working on a book manuscript based on the PhD dissertation, with additions from research undertaken since then using digital databases.
Territory Without Maps — non-cartographical spatial perceptions in antiquity
This project aims to account for a fact often overlooked by historians of antiquity: space was rarely perceived through cartographical devices, which became central only in the early modern period. It turns to sources and the history of scholarship from the ancient Near East and the Roman world to suggest how different parts of the world were perceived and depicted without a map in mind.
Biblical Toponymy in Israel
In modern Israel, there are thousands of biblical toponyms, the vast majority of which were chosen by official committees during the twentieth century. This research examines how they function at the crossroads of geography, scripture, and national identity.
Conference presentations
“The Mental Map of the Babylonian Talmud”
The Jewish World Map · University of Haifa and the Open University of Israel · Haifa ·
“Biblically Derived Toponyms in Israel as a Midrash”
56th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies · Online ·
“Parallel Geographies in Late Antiquity”
Annual Conference of the European Association for Jewish Studies · Online ·
“Bringing the Bible to Babylonia — Rabbinic Cognitive Mapping in the Babylonian Talmud”
54th Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies · Boston, MA, USA ·
“Migrating Centres: Bavli Ketubbot’s Reorientation of Jewish Geography and Revision of Jewish History”
Examining the Roles of Identity in the Abrahamic Religions · Oxford, UK · · Conference co-organizer
“Where Is Babylonia? Delineating Identity Through Spatial Boundaries in the Babylonian Talmud”
Borderlines in Religion · Ben-Gurion University of the Negev · · In Hebrew