ESTEEMED PRESENTER:
PROF. ABIGAIL JACOBSON is a historian working on the social and urban history of late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine and the Eastern Mediterranean. Her main research interest is the history of ethnically and nationally mixed spaces and communities, especially during war and conflict. Prof. Jacobson is the author of two books: “From Empire to Empire: Jerusalem between Ottoman and British Rule,” and Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. She completed her Ph.D. at the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Before joining the Hebrew University, she was the Academic Director of the Borders and Sovereignty theme (previously The Mediterranean Neighbors Unit) at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Previously, she served as a junior research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, a lecturer at the Department of History at MIT, a visiting lecturer at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, and a lecturer at The Raphael Recanati International School at Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). She is currently the chief editor of the Journal of Levantine Studies.