George L. Mosse UW-Madison - Hebrew University of Jerusalem Graduate Exchange Fellows
Aman Abhishek, Exchange Fellow (2022-2024)
Aman Abhishek is a Ph.D. student from India studying at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, with minors in history and political science. His dissertation research is on whistleblowing, big leaks of data and investigative journalism: cases like Panama Papers, WikiLeaks and Snowden’s leaks. In addition, he has published journal articles on the politics of Facebook’s mass communication research grants; computational analysis of the Twitter and news media discourses on mass shootings in the US and the #MeToo movement, etc. Prior to joining the PhD program, Aman got a MA in physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a B.S.-M.S. in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. In his research he prefers to not remain confined to quantitative methods and adopts historical, qualitative, STS and legal studies approaches depending on the context.
Tom Eshed, HUJI PhD student 2020-2024
Graduate Exchange: 2022-2023
Tom Eshed is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed a BA in History and MA in Jewish History at the Hebrew University. Tom’s dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Amos Goldberg, explores Holocaust commemoration and remembrance in Israeli cultural diplomacy between 1953-2005. His research follows various commemoration initiatives led by Israeli diplomats and Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Authority, outside of Israel during this time period, from the initiative to confer Israeli citizenship upon Holocaust victims during the 1950s, to the initiative to commemorate an International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which the United Nations established in 2005. In his research, Tom wishes to examine how Israeli cultural diplomacy influenced Holocaust memory in Israel and abroad, and how it affected Israeli foreign relations and its relations with the Jewish diaspora.
Mor Geller, HUJI PhD student 2022-2026
Graduate Exchange: 2022-2023
Mor Geller started her PhD in autumn 2021. Her dissertation will explore the widespread phenomenon of public opinion polling in East Germany and the multiple roles it played in the effort to sustain and reform the state’s power structure between the mid-1960s and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Through an analysis of the surveys and reports produced by the state-sanctioned social research institutes, she aims to establish the centrality and of this method to the cultural, social, and political history of the German Democratic Republic and to understand the ways in which it was used by citizens in unexpected ways to imagine the future(s) of the GDR.
Mor’s research interests include film, Alltagsgeschichte, and Marxist thought. She has won fellowships and grants from HUJI’s Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, and the DAAD at the HUJI European Forum. She has also served as co-editor of graduate and undergraduate journal of history Hayo Haya in the years 2019–21.
Marko Kljajić, Exchange Fellow (2022-2024)
Marko Kljajić is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Marko’s research examines the role of collective victimhood beliefs on intergroup dynamics such as conflict and reconciliation in the Western Balkans and beyond. Combining experiments and in-depth qualitative research, his research focuses on how individuals conceive of ingroup victimization and whether individuals can expand their conception of victimization to acknowledge that members of adversarial groups may have suffered in equal if not similar ways. As a Mosse Fellow at Hebrew University, Marko plans to advance his research working at the Conflict and Reconciliation Lab and with other faculty in the Humanities who specialize in study of collective victimization in the Israeli context. Marko’s research hopes to provide insight into why some people are better able to reconcile after violence and how others can be better motivated towards finding reconciliation and away from conflict.
Noy Nahum, HUJI MA student (2022-2024)
Graduate Exchange: 2022-2023
Noy Nahum is currently completing his B.A in History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main interests are in intellectual history and political ideas in the second half of the 20th century, particularly in Michel Foucault’s Political Philosophy. He also researching Michel Foucault's process of entrance into the Israeli discourse, and the contemporary Israeli discourse about Foucault's philosophy. In his M.A. thesis he looked at how Foucault understood the relationship between his works and the ideas of neo-Marxist thinkers of his time. Noy is the 2022-2023 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Khasan Redjaboev, Exchange Fellow (2022-2024)
Khasan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Khasan's research examines over 100 years of gender-indiscriminate and mass state-sponsored forced labor on social attitudes, political elite formation, public goods delivery, and trust in the postcommunist Eurasia. Drawing on extensive archival resources, source interviews, surveys, and statistical data, Khasan's research focuses on forced labor as one of the most fateful institutions in the region. As a Mosse Fellow, Khasan plans to work on his book project and novel micro-level dataset for the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, and their survivor states. Adding to a body of literature on the political economy of slavery, serfdom, and GULAG prison labor, Khasan hopes to shed more light to previously understudied state-sponsored forced labor and the unlikely to drastic social changes that it produced under totalitarian environment.
Alex Scheepens, Exchange Fellow (2022-2024)
Alex Scheepens is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his M.A. in European Studies (2016) and B.A. in International Relations and History (2014), both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and completed a second M.A. in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2021). His current research centers on the Jewish experience in hiding in Nazi-occupied Netherlands. By employing a geographical lens and the history of emotions and drawing on written and oral sources in the Dutch, English, and Hebrew languages, he looks at the choices, motivations, behaviors, and experiences of those Jewish individuals who sought to escape the Nazi deportations and find refuge among their non-Jewish countrymen. Alongside his dissertation work, his teaching and research interests range from topics in modern European Jewish history and the Holocaust to the history of antisemitism, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
George L. Mosse Faculty Exchange
Nadav Shelef, George L. Mosse Faculty Exchange Fellow (2022-2023)
Nadav Shelef is Professor of Political Science, and the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Israel Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. Shelef's research and teaching focus on nationalism, ethnic and territorial conflict, religion and politics, Israeli politics and society, and Middle East politics. His current projects examine how homelands change, how nationalists demobilize, and aspects of civil-military relations. His most recent books are Evolving Nationalism: Homeland, Identity, and Religion in Israel, 1925–2005, and Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes.
George L. Mosse LGBTQ+ History Fellows
Isobel Bloom, George L. Mosse LGBTQ+ History Fellow
Isobel Bloom is a Ph.D. History candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before moving to the US from the UK, she earned an M.Phil. in American History from the University of Cambridge and a B.A. in History from the University of Bristol. She is currently embarking on research for her doctoral dissertation regarding pro-life movement organizing in the 1980s and 1990s United States.
Ezra Gerard, George L. Mosse LGBTQ+ History Fellow
Ezra Gerard received his BA in history from the University of Michigan in 2014. He is now a first year PhD student in History and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Broadly speaking, his research concerns transgender history in the United States and Germany in the mid-twentieth century. Ezra is particularly interested in examining the prominence of the “wrong body” narrative in mass media representations of trans identity and in the role of personal narrative and memory in the construction of trans histories.
George L. Mosse WDGF Modern Jewish & Modern European Culture Fellows
Collin Bernard, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Collin Bernard is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his MSc from the London School of Economics from the International History department in 2017 and his B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. His dissertation compares the relationship between urban social movements in 1970s Paris, France and Milan, Italy and the communist parties in each country. The project looks at the interrelationship between social, urban, and political dynamics as a means of understanding Western European communism's demise and the transformation of the popular classes. In the Spring of 2024, with the support of the George Mosse Teaching Fellowship, Collin will offer a course on European cities in the 20th century. The course will emphasize the conflicting political visions for cities that remade urban Europe.
Ethell Gershengorin, George L. Mosse Modern Jewish History Fellow
Ethell Gershengorin is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed her B.A. in International Relations at Boston University. Her primary area of interest is the intersection of class, religion and gender identities under the Soviet regime and the ways in which everyday Soviet citizens, especially Jewish women, adapted to and confronted policies. Her research will examine Jewish women’s resistance to and disruption of Soviet policies and norms through art and material culture.
Nina Walter, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Nina Walter has come to UW-Madison from Scotland, where she completed her studies in History and Cultural Identity at the University of St Andrews. For her Masters thesis, Nina conducted original archival research into the role of Esperanto in Poland ca. 1887-1939. During her time in Wisconsin, she would like to further explore attitudes to multiculturalism and multilingualism in pre-World War II Europe through the prism of Esperanto, with a special focus on Jewish communities in Poland and Celtic (and possibly Scots) speakers on the British Isles.
Historical research into the early stages of the Esperanto movement in Europe perfectly combines Nina’s interests in culture, history, and languages. She holds a Qualified Teacher Status from the University of Warsaw and has spent most of her adult life traveling extensively and teaching English in Poland, Britain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
August Brereton, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
August Brereton is a PhD student in the department of History, focusing on Modern Russian/Eastern European History as well as a secondary Program in Gender and Women’s History. August completed a MA in History at the University of Oregon in 2022, where she wrote her thesis, “From Russia With Love: A Transnational History of Post-Soviet Wives and their American Husbands” which focused on mixed Russian-American marriages in the 1990s and 2000s. Her dissertation research explores intersections between gender, emigration, and economics in late and post-Soviet history. She is also very interested in Russian-Ukrainian relations. August is a passionate advocate for oral history and ethical representation of underserved populations in academic research.
Alice C.M. Kwok, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Alice C.M. Kwok is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She received her M.A. in History from UW Madison in 2018; her thesis was entitled “Sexing the Terror: The Jeunesse Dorée and the Fall of the Parisian Jacobin Club (1794)”. She holds a B.A. from the University of California Berkeley in History and French. Her work focuses on the French Revolution, particularly the role of gender and sexuality in counter-revolutionary critiques of republicanism. She also writes about representations of the Revolution in nineteenth-century Academic art and art institutions. Her adviser is Prof. Suzanne Desan.
Ludwig Decke, George L. Mosse European Cultural History Fellow
Ludwig is interested in the intersection of Jewish, (post-)colonial, and modern European history. His research investigates the paradoxes of liberalism as a force of both emancipation and domination. He is currently working on his dissertation project “Antiracism after Hitler: Jews, the State, and the Fight against Racial Discrimination in Western Europe, 1945-1992,” which intertwines two stories that are usually considered in separate terms: Jewish responses to antisemitism and the antiracist struggle of other racialized populations. Before he began his Ph.D. in the Midwest, Ludwig studied history, philosophy, and sociology at the University of Leipzig, the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was a Fulbright Fellow at UW-Madison in 2018-2019.
Ri J. Turner, George L. Mosse Modern Jewish History Fellow
Ri J. Turner is a PhD candidate in the department of History. Her research focuses on the role of the American Yiddish press as a semi-private space for "internal" conversation among Eastern European Jewish immigrants at the turn of the last century. She holds an MA in Yiddish from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an MA in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts, as well as a BA in Anthropology from Cornell University. Apart from research, she is passionate about Yiddish language pedagogy, the curation and translation of little-known Yiddish texts, setting Yiddish poetry to music, and reading literary and journalistic texts in Hebrew, Polish, French, and Spanish.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mosse History Fellows
Boaz Berger, HUJI PhD student (2018-2022)
Boaz Berger is currently finishing his M.A at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he also completed his B.A studies in history. His main field of interest is British cultural history during the long 18th century. In his M.A research he examines how the War of American Independence was visually depicted in England. In his PhD he will examine how British politicians embraced a modern visual representation of "chivalry" in order to cope with the crisis at the turn of the 19th century.
Meirav Reuveny, George L. Mosse Dissertator Fellowship (2022-2023)
Meirav Reuveny is completing her PhD in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interest is in the convergence of Jewish cultural history, nationalism, and the Hebrew language in Europe and Palestine/Israel. She engages with questions of public space, the translation of historical heritage into modern notions, and identity development through cultural activity. Her dissertation "The Polemic over Hebrew: Linguistic Discourse and Modernization in the Jewish Press, 1856-1914" examines the ideological background of the modernization of Hebrew and employs methods of cultural history, sociolinguistics, and critical discourse analysis. Her current research explores the creation of Hebrew children's culture in Russia as a reflection of Jewish society's perception of the future.
In addition to her research, Meirav is also the archivist of Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem.
Emmi Cohen, HUJI MA student (2022-2024)
Emmi Cohen is currently completing her B.A in history and functional linguistics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main interests are contemporary American history with an emphasis on the history of culture, sexuality, and gender. She is also interested in discourse analysis and in the role of linguistic protocols in shaping our social lives and histories. In her M.A, she plans on looking into 20th century American sexual culture and discourse, and in examining the relationship between sexuality and nation building in governmental circles. Emmi is the 2023-2024 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ayana Sassoon, HUJI PhD student (2022-2026)
I am currently in my first year of PhD studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I am a graduate of the Revivim Program at the Hebrew University, a combination BA-MA-teacher certification program training high school educators in Jewish Studies for the public school system. In my MA thesis in Jewish History, I focused on the marking of the Jews by yellow stars and other kinds of distinguishing signs during the Holocaust from different Jewish perspectives. At present, I am writing my dissertation, “‘Life Today Revolves Around Food’: Food and its Meanings for Jews in Germany, the Netherlands, and France during the Holocaust," under the guidance of Prof. Amos Goldberg in the Department of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Taili Hardiman, HUJI MA student (2020-2022)
Taili Hardiman is currently completing her B.A in History and Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main interests are in the histories of science and visual culture in modern Europe. Continuing onto an M.A in History, she will focus on the production of knowledge, observational practices, and disciplinary development of the social sciences in 19th Britain. Taili is the 2020-2021 George L. Mosse Fellow to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently the co-editor of ‘Hayo Haya - Student Journal for History’ and an archive assistant for the ‘Einstein Papers Project’.
George L. Mosse-Friends of the UW Libraries Fellows
Donatello Aramini, Mosse-Friends of UW Libraries Fellow (2020-2022)
Donatello Aramini has a PhD in Contemporary History. He is a lecturer in Contemporary History at the Department of Political Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome. He has taught History of contemporary Italy and the history of journalism at the Roma Tre University and University of Cassino, and was a 2011 Mosse-Friends Fellow. He is a member of the editorial board of Mondo contemporaneo. His research examines nationalism, Nazism, racism and the history of historiography. He is the author of the book George L. Mosse, l'Italia e gli storici (FrancoAngeli, Milan, 2010) and is currently working on two monographs on nationalism and fascism and on the myth of Rome in fascist Italy.
Stefania Ragaù, Mosse-Friends of UW Libraries Fellow (2020-2022)
Stefania Ragaù earned her PhD in contemporary history at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa with a work on the flowering of the Jewish utopian novels in relation to the emergence of Zionism. In her challenging studies on Jewish utopias, she deals with the secularization of Jewish thought between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analyzing the influence of a modern messianism through which Jewish nationalism configured itself as a secular religion. These projects led Ragaù to Mosse's works. She is currently developing her studies along two further lines of research, which is related to the encounter between the European philosophy of history and Jewish thought: one line is the Jewish utopian imagination beyond Zionism, while the other is the historical reconstruction of Nationalhumanismus, a concept which seems to have been created by Max Brod and Felix Weltsch in the so-called “enger Prager Kreis.” Finally, she has recently published her first monograph, Sognando Sion (Dreaming of Zion), on the Jewish utopian novels before Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland (1902).
George L. Mosse UW-Madison Graduate Fellows
Jagravi Dave, 2022-2023 Mosse-UW Press Project Assistant
Jagravi Dave is a student in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Literary Studies PhD program through the Department of English. She completed her M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and B.A. in English and Linguistics from Cornell University. Her research interests include contemporary poetry and poetics, Black Studies, postcolonial and diaspora studies, environmental humanities, history of labor, and human geography.
Matthew M. Greene, 2021-2022 George L. Mosse Project Assistant
Matthew M. Greene is a PhD candidate in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic+ at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation considers the role of language in world literature, focusing on semantic shift, narration, form, and translation in German-language texts. He has several English translations in publication from German, Yiddish, Spanish, Italian, and French. At UW-Madison, he has taught a variety of German language as well as Yiddish history, culture, and literature courses. He holds an MA from UW-Madison in German, an MA from Dartmouth College in Comparative Literature, and a BA from the University of Vermont in European Studies, German, and Italian.
George L. Mosse Undergraduate Interns in Digital and European History
Rachel Lynch, George L. Mosse Program Undergraduate Intern (2022-2023)
Rachel Lynch is a senior at UW-Madison studying History, Political Science, and Classical Humanities. Under the advisory of Professor Alfred McCoy, she is writing a senior honors history thesis concerning Ronald Reagan’s use of the CIA in covert operations during the Cold War, inspired by the general American aversion to conventional military power and European geopolitical theory. Her research interests lie mostly in Western historical memory of military conflicts. In addition to the Mosse Program internship, she is on the executive board of The Women’s Network- Wisconsin chapter, and volunteers for The Literacy Network, where she works with returning students completing their GED. She is currently working on the virtual exhibit, “1914: Then Came Armageddon,” focusing on the Allied powers.
Rose Weithaus, George L. Mosse Program Undergraduate Intern (2022-2024)
Rose Weithaus is a sophomore at UW-Madison studying political science and history with a certificate in public policy. Her interests include American foreign relations, early European and Middle Eastern religious history, the Founding era, and Eastern Europe in the post-WWII world. Outside of her work in history, Rose is a member of the Pre-Law Society and Pi Alpha Theta. She also works at the Center for Leadership and Involvement, specifically for the Jones Leadership Center and the Morgridge Center for Public Service. She is ecstatic to learn and looks forward to exploring various avenues of historical research throughout her internship. She believes history is an important part of understanding the world and hopes this experience can help her share that with others.
George L. Mosse Undergraduate Peer Advisors
Nick Censoprano, George L. Mosse Peer Advisor (2022-2023)
Nick Censoprano (he/him/his) is a senior at UW-Madison majoring in History with certificates in Italian, European Studies, and Art History. His academic interests include the study of U.S. foreign policy and imperialism, the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Latin American politics. After graduation, he plans to pursue a master's degree in Library and Information Science. Nick is excited and proud to serve as a Mosse Peer Advisor for the History Department and looks forward to discussing the value and significance of studying history with other students.
Rae Kalscheuer, George L. Mosse Peer Advisor (2022-2023)
Rae Kalscheuer (they/them/theirs) is a junior at UW-Madison majoring in History and English. Their academic interests are rooted in international relations, the history of oppression, and intersectional identities. This year they are taking on this role as a Mosse Peer Advisor as well as being the Historian for Phi Alpha Theta and a member of the Art History Society on campus. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, they are honored to be a part of a Program whose legacy includes focusing on the persecution of political others by fascists while helping their peers. After graduation, they intend on going to law school with a focus on international law.