Professor Catherine Hezser awarded British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship

21 April 2022

Catherine Hezser, Professor of Jewish Studies, has been granted a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship for the 2022-23 academic year for her project on "Rabbinic Literature in the Context of Late Antique Scholasticism".

Professor Hezser feels particularly honoured of being awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship for the 2022-3 academic year that is funded by the Thanks Offering to Britain Fund based on the Thank-You Britain Appeal. This appeal was initiated in 1963-5 by the Association of Jewish Refugees, founded in 1941, as a mark of gratitude to Britain for its provision of a home for Jews persecuted by the Nazi regime.

Her research will focus on "Rabbinic Literature in the Context of Late Antique Scholasticism". The study aims at integrating Near Eastern rabbinic scholarship, conducted in Hebrew and Aramaic, into the context of late antique scholasticism, antiquarianism, and encyclopaedism, phenomena that have mostly been studied for western knowledge cultures based on “classical” Greek education (paideia), by combining a social-historical approach with a form-critical and redaction-historical investigation. In the context of the Roman-Byzantine Empire, the political significance of an "alternative" rabbinic knowledge culture that competed with Graeco-Roman and Christian knowledge will be explored.