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College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Florida

CJSA Bios

El Mehdi Boudra

El Mehdi Boudra

Tuesday June 2, 2026

El Mehdi Boudra has a special interest in minority rights and cross-cultural communication and dialogue. In 2007, he founded Association Mimouna, a Moroccan nongovernmental organization that aims to advance Muslim-Jewish dialogue. In 2011, Boudra organized the first Holocaust Conference in the Arab world. In 2018, Boudra was among the Algemeiner Journal’s J100 list of the […]
Adriana M. Brodsky

Adriana M. Brodsky

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Adriana M. Brodsky is Professor of Latin American and Jewish History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Her book Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine: Creating Community and National Identity, 1880-1960, appeared in 2016, and her most recent publication is a co-edited volume called Jews Across the Americas (with Laura Leibman). She has written on Argentine Sephardi reactions […]
Judah M. Cohen

Judah M. Cohen

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Judah M. Cohen is the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel provost of Hebrew Union College. In addition to a variety of books and articles on Jewish music, culture and history across the Americas, he has authored Through the Sands of Time: a History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands (2004) and […]
Shai Cohen

Shai Cohen

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Dr. Shai Cohen is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami and Director of The Eleonore Graves Tripp Modern Languages Laboratory and Media Center. His research examines legal and cultural intersections among communities in Spain, with a focus on the converso experience, political satire in seventeenth-century Spain, and Sephardi […]
Abigail Lapin Dardashti

Abigail Lapin Dardashti

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Abigail Lapin Dardashti’s research examines modern and contemporary Latin American, Latina/o/x, as well as African and Jewish diasporic art with a focus on international exchange, migration, racial and ethnic formation, and activism. Broadly, her work unpacks the impact of migration and travel on diasporic artistic productions in the Americas during the 20th and 21st centuries. […]
Daniela Gleizer

Daniela Gleizer

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Daniela Gleizer is a professor and researcher at the Institute of Historical Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She holds a Ph.D. in History from El Colegio de México and has received several awards for her work. Her research focuses on the relationship between the Mexican state and foreigners, with an emphasis on immigration […]
Daniel Fainstein

Daniel Fainstein

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Professor Daniel Fainstein is Dean and Professor of Jewish Studies at the Universidad Hebraica de México. He completed his academic training with honors at the University of Buenos Aires, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he earned a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Political and Social Sciences. […]
David S. Koffman

David S. Koffman

Tuesday June 2, 2026

David S. Koffman is the J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry, and an associate professor in the Department of History at York University where he teaches courses including History’s Greatest Hits, Making Money, A Convenient Hatred: Antisemitism Before, During and After the Holocaust, History of Me: The Genealogy Seminar, Worry and […]
Matthias B. Lehmann

Matthias B. Lehmann

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Matthias B. Lehmann is professor of modern Jewish history at the University of Cologne, where he directs the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies. His main interests are nineteenth century Jewish history in a transnational perspective, international Jewish philanthropy, and Sephardic cultural history. He is the author of The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the […]
Jeffrey Lesser

Jeffrey Lesser

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History at Emory University.  His new book, Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2025; Editora UNESP, 2025), focuses on a multi-ethnic, working class, neighborhood to analyze how the state creates and enacts health policies and asks […]
Devin E. Naar

Devin E. Naar

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies, and associate professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His first book, “Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece,” won a National Jewish Book Award (2016). His current book project focuses on the history of Ladino-speaking […]
Ronnie Perelis

Ronnie Perelis

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Ronnie Perelis is the Chief Rabbi Dr. Isaac Abraham and Jelena (Rachel) Alcalay Associate Professor of Sephardic Studies at Yeshiva University and the Director of the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Program for International Affairs. Perelis has taught the history of the Jews of Spain and their diasporas in academic and popular settings throughout the world. His research […]
Raanan Rein

Raanan Rein

Tuesday June 2, 2026

Raanan Rein is the the Alexander Grass Chair in Jewish Studies/Jews in Spanish Speaking Countries/Israel Studies at the University of Florida. He is an author and editor of more than fifty books and well over a hundred and fifty articles in academic journals and book chapters, in several languages. He is a member of Argentina’s […]
Analucía Lopezrevoredo

Analucía Lopezrevoredo

Monday June 1, 2026

Dr. Analucía Lopezrevoredo is a Peruvian-American sociologist, organizational leader, and scholar of transnational identity and community formation. As Founder and CEO of Jewtina y Co., she leads a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating Latin-Jewish community, identity, leadership, and resilience across North America. Her scholarship and practice have positioned her as a leading voice in strengthening […]
Joshua Tapper

Joshua Tapper

Monday June 1, 2026

Joshua Tapper is a research associate at York University’s Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies and a doctoral candidate in Jewish History at Stanford University, where his dissertation explores the impact of perestroika-era reforms on Soviet Jewish culture and politics at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. His scholarship on Russian-speaking Jewish immigration to […]
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