Catherine Hezser

Catherine Hezser is Professor of Jewish Studies at SOAS, University of London. She received a Dr. theol. from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in New York in 1992. After a senior research fellowship at King's College, Cambridge (UK), she worked at the Free University Berlin in the context of a research project on The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture and as a Heisenberg Professor funded by the German Research Council. In 2000 she became Al and Felice Lippert Chair of Jewish and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the Herzog Centre there. From 2005 onwards she taught at SOAS, University of London. She has also been a visiting research professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem and visiting professor at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Her research focuses on Jews and Judaism in the Land of Israel in Roman-Byzantine times, the study of rabbinic literature from a social-historical and cultural studies perspective, and relations between Jews and non-Jews in antiquity. Amongst her major book publications are The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (1997), The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (vol. 2, ed. with Peter Schäfer 1998), Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (2001), Rabbinic Law in its Roman and Near Eastern Context (ed. 2003), Jewish Slavery in Antiquity (2005), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (ed. 2010), Jewish Travel in Antiquity (2011), Jewish Art in its Late Antique Context (ed. with Uzi Leibner, 2016), Rabbinic Body Language (2017), Bild und Kontext. Jüdische und christliche Ikonographie der Spätantike (2018), The Use and Dissemination of Religious Knowledge in Antiquity (ed. with Diana Edelman, 2021), Jews and Health: Tradition, History, and Practice (ed. 2023), The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity (2024).