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Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies
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Research Associates and Visiting Scholars

Research Associates

  • Dr. Amira Bojadzija-Dan (ongoing)
  • Dr. Sarah Jane (SJ) Kerr-Lapsley (2023-2024) holds a PhD Educational Studies (Vanier Scholar 2017-20) and an MA Education from McGill, alongside an Honours degree in Sociocultural Anthropology from UBC. Her doctoral research focused on communities of practice in Holocaust education, and the pedagogical relationships that form between social studies teachers and external resources, such as museums and community organizations. SJ’s current research interests include pedagogical communities of practice, teaching and learning in higher education, information design, curatorial strategies, and modern architectural history.
  • Dr. Liat Naeh (2022- ) is a scholar and a museum professional focusing on the art and archaeology of the Middle East during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Her interests and teaching encompass the ancient Levant, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean; the historiography of archaeology in the Middle East; and practices of collecting and displaying antiquities in museums and beyond. Her research ranges from 20th-century displays of Biblical Archaeology within museum exhibitions in Israel and North America, to the study of ancient Canaanite and Israelite schools of art in the context of West-Semitic literary traditions. She has published extensively on Levantine cult sites, bone and ivory craft, as well as Levantine ritualistic furniture, and is the co-editor of a volume on thrones in the ancient world. Before arriving in Toronto, Naeh was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Bard Graduate Center, both in New York. She is also a published, award-winning poet in her native language of Hebrew.
  • Dr. Matt Reingold (2020- ) completed his PhD in Jewish Education at York University as a Wexner Fellow & Davidson Scholar. His research interests are Jewish and Israeli graphic novels and Israel education. He is currently working on a manuscript about Israeli cartoonist Asaf Hanuka.
  • Dr. Marina Zilbergertz (2022-2023) (Ph.D, Stanford University) is a scholar of Jewish Literature and Thought. She is the author of The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature (Indiana University Press, 2022). From 2016-2022, she was the Lipton Assistant Professor in Eastern European Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Marina is currently working on a book project on biblical voice and narrative. She grew up in Zhitomir, Tel Aviv, and Toronto. 
  • Dr. Simon-Pierre Lacasse (2020-2021)
  • Rich Robertson (2020-2021)
  • Cristiana Conti (2019-2020) is completing a Ph.D. (ABD) in biblical exegesis in the Department of History at York University, with a defense expected in late Spring 2023. Her dissertation, entitled The Curse of Yhwh: Neo-Assyrian Anti-Witchcraft Imagery in the Book of Jeremiah, compares Jeremiah's rhetoric against false prophecy to earlier anti-demonic language in Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft literature. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Humanities at Austin Community College (Austin, Texas). Her teaching interests include Ancient Israel and Ancient Near Eastern history, biblical prophecy, comparative literature, and religion. She has been a Research Associate at the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies (York University, 2019-2020) and is currently on the editorial team of the academic journal Estudios Orientales – MonografíasRIIPOA. She co-authored an article last year entitled “'The Whispering of Many’: The Contribution of Ancient Near Eastern Literature to Interpreting the Hebrew Bible," which is forthcoming in an edited volume from the Cambridge University Press.
  • Dr. Stephanie Tara Schwartz (2018-2019)
  • Dr. Igal German (2017-2018) is an Israeli biblical scholar. His research interests range from the book of Genesis and its history of interpretation to Second Temple Jewish writings. Igal has taught a wide range of courses on the Hebrew Bible within its ancient Near East context. Igal teaches at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago. 

Visiting Scholars

York University Visiting Professorship in Israel Studies

The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies inaugurated the York University Visiting Professorship in Israel Studies in the Fall of 2008 and has welcomed many Israeli professor since. The project was made possible a partnership with private donors, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, and York's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.