Emma Bermond

PhD candidate, Université Gustave Eiffel (France) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich (Germany)

Supervisors: PD Dr Pierre Savy and Prof. Dr Eva Haverkamp-Rott

In 2025, I had the pleasure of beginning a joint PhD programme between Université Gustave Eiffel and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. My research focuses on the history of Jewish communities in the Late Middle Ages in what is now southern Lower Saxony. Building on my previous research on the medieval Jewish cultural heritage of the imperial city of Goslar, I sought to expand the geographical scope of my research to other cities in the region, including Braunschweig, Hameln, Helmstedt, and Hildesheim. With regard to the establishment of Jewish communities, these cities share several common characteristics: relatively late settlement (from the second half of the 13^th century onwards), a comparatively high degree of tolerance towards Jewish communities, and relatively small- or medium-sized communities.

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Reed O’Mara

Ph.D. candidate, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) (dir. Professor Elina Gertsman) and 2025–27 Samuel H. Kress Institutional Fellow in the History of Art at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte (ZI) 

In my research, I focus on the art of medieval Ashkenaz, with a special interest in Hebrew illuminated manuscripts and incunabula. My dissertation examines word and image relationships in manuscripts and printed works in order to better understand the ever-changing perceptions of the Hebrew language in the late Middle Ages, ca. 1200–1500, by Jewish and Christian communities alike. From examples of visual-verbal wordplay to the material splendor of word panels in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mahzorim all the way to the weaponization of Hebrew in fifteenth-century broadsides and anti-Jewish polemics, my work aims to contribute to our appreciation of how language and art operated in tandem in medieval visual culture.

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Marie Lehmann

PhD student in medieval history

University of Rostock, Germany

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marc von der Höh

My PhD project examines early anti-Jewish prints, specifically single-broadsheets and pamphlets, that refer to medieval anti-Jewish narratives, particularly accusations of ritual murder and host desecration. Continue reading 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.

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Lauren Urbont

PhD candidate in History

Stanford University

Supervisors: Professor Fiona Griffiths and Professor Rowan Dorin

“The topic of my research is devoted to the role of death and the dead in daily life in both Jewish and Christian communities in medieval Western Europe between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. In particular, my interest lies in where the dead inhered in daily life, including through their presence lingering in material objects, dedications, ritual practices in the home, and cemetery visitation. My aim is to ascertain how the presence of the dead in daily life was mediated in legal sources, complemented by narrative and moral sources that sometimes deviated from legal standards. Ultimately, I would like to delineate the ways in which Jews and Christians participated in mutual norms and practices around the continued presence of the dead in the experience of the living, and in which particular ways the two traditions diverged.   

Ilona Steimann, PhD

Research Associate
Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg

“I study Jewish book culture and book collecting practices with a strong focus on the perception and handling of Hebrew manuscripts by their medieval Jewish and Christian owners in Europe. My research brings the post-production lives of books to the front and is built around the questions of how manuscripts were redirected to meet the needs of new audiences and how they were adapted to the new religious, intellectual, and sociocultural settings. To answer these questions, I examine the trajectories of books, owners’ additions, and material modifications, which turned older books into actualized, customized, and personalized objects.

Pelia Werth

PhD candidate in History
Johns Hopkins University
Supervisor: Prof. Anne Lester

“My doctoral research combines two of my major interests – interfaith relations in the Middle Ages and the practice and experience of pilgrimage. My thesis examines pilgrimage sites that were ‘shared’ by Jews, Muslims, and Christians in and around the crusader period (c. 1050-1300). Specifically, I am interested in how sharing sacred space allowed members of different religious communities to encounter one another, and how experiences and conceptions of such spaces helped shape perceptions of people from other religious and ethnic groups.

Lena Sadovski-Kornprobst

PhD Candidate
University of Vienna, Institute for Eastern European History

“In my dissertation conducted at the Institute for Eastern European History of the University of Vienna, I am studying the Dalmatian town of Split (It. Spalato) under Venetian rule in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. My research centres on the ways the Venetians administrated the town and how the various communities living in Split organized their daily lives under the influence of both the Venetian dominion and the constant Ottoman threat coming from the Balkan hinterland. By consulting various sources from the archives of Zadar, Split, and Venice – especially notarial acts and court proceedings – I thus have studied who lived in Split, which groups and communities existed there, and how they interacted.