All posts by Franziska Kleybolte

About Franziska Kleybolte

After completing her studies in History and Art History in Munich, Pisa, Tel Aviv, and Oxford, Franziska Kleybolte began her PhD at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ at the University of Münster, which she is now finalizing. Her doctoral research examines the phenomenon of synagogue-to-church conversions in late medieval Castile. Currently, she is a research assistant in the Jewish Studies Department at the University of Münster, where she teaches undergraduate courses, and at the Bet Tfila Research Centre for Jewish Architecture at the Technical University of Braunschweig, where she develops a teaching network in Jewish Heritage Studies. Her research focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Europe and their reflection in material culture, as well as the application of postcolonial concepts to premodern contexts. In January 2026, she will join the research project “Contending with Crises” (Hebrew University, lead by Prof. Elisheva Baumgarten) as a postdoctoral fellow, focusing on Jewish responses to spatial crises in Iberia and Ashkenaz.

CfP, Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Trajectories and Interactions in the Mediterranean, Madrid

The Conference “Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Trajectories and Interactions in the Mediterranean,” taking place from 9 to 12 June 2026, organized by the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East (ILC-CSIC) in collaboration with the Common Action Forum (CAF), invites for paper proposals. The conference aims “to offer a comprehensive approach to the topic, bridging academic research with public outreach and citizen science. To this end, it will bring together specialists from diverse disciplines to foster interdisciplinary debate and present new perspectives on the political, cultural, and religious history of the Mediterranean, with particular emphasis on the analysis of textual sources and their circulation in multiconfessional and multilingual contexts. With this dual focus, the congress aims to demonstrate the public role of academia by translating historical and philosophical perspectives into reflections on contemporary challenges: the trajectories that have shaped the development and evolution of the Mediterranean up to the present day have much to reveal about the end of  geographical and historical barriers, as well as about the immediacy and misinformation that characterize the modern age. In an exercise of scientific and academic diplomacy, the congress seeks to open a dialogue connecting past interactions with the challenges of today’s technological era.”

Submission Deadline for Proposals: 31 December 2025

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CfP: Jews between Public and Private Through the Ages

The conference “Jews between Public and Private Through the Ages,” taking place from 12 to 13 January 2026 at the Institute for Jewish Studies at Jagiellonian University in Krakow has issued a call for papers. It “aims at bringing together historians of various disciplines and periods, from Antiquity to the end of the Second World War, dealing with social, cultural, religious, legal history, as well as rabbinic literature, such as responsa” to discuss questions such as “what does it mean for a person to be at home? How does the idea of bodily integrity or accessibility for religious rituals affect the personal feeling of privacy of a given person?”

Deadline: 14 November 2025

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Researcher of the Week

Friederike Schöpf, PhD

Research Associate

University of Münster

“I studied both Near Eastern Archaeology and Jewish Studies, and I have always sought to approach questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. My primary research interest concerns the dual—both physical and symbolic—dimensions of material culture and its potential for reconstructing social realities. Since textual sources predominantly reflect the concerns of the intellectual elite and thereby represent only a segment of medieval society, material culture—being used, seen, and shared by all—provides access to a broader spectrum of social experience.

Continue reading Researcher of the Week

CfP: Interne Organisation und Außenkommunikation jüdischer Gemeinschaften in der Frühen Neuzeit

Here is the call for papers for a conference on “Interne Organisation und Außenkommunikation jüdischer Gemeinschaften in der Frühen Neuzeit”, organized by the Forum Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur in der Frühen Neuzeit (Academy of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Stuttgart-Hohenheim). The conference focuses on the history of Jewish communities after their expulsions in the late Middle Ages and examines how these communities coped with the challenges of a new beginning in the Early Modern period.

Deadline: 19.10.2025.