Our revealed guests
Dr. Eliezer Papo
Dr. Eliezer Papo is a senior lecturer at the Hebrew Literature Department at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Chairman of the Moshe David Gaon Center for Ladino Culture at the same University, and the chief editor of El Prezente the Journal for Sephardic Studies, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Gaon Center. He also serves as the President of Sefarad – Society for Sephardic Studies, an international professional association of scientists in the field of Sephardic studies, as a Member of the Israeli National Academy for Ladino (where he is also a member of the Executive Board), as a representative of the Israeli academic institutions in the Council of the National Authority for Ladino Culture (where he is also a member of the Executive Board), as well as an Académico correspondiente de la Real Academia Española (Foreign Member of the Spanish Royal Academy).
Dr. Papo’s research centers on Hebrew/Jewish oral literature, with a specialization in Sephardic literature (oral and written, rabbinic and secular). His book And Thou Shall Jest with Your Son: Judeo-Spanish Parodies on the Passover Haggadah received the prestigious Ben-Tzvi award.
Dr. Ariel Hessayon
Dr. Ariel Hessayon is the Head of the Department of History and a Reader in Early Modern History at Goldsmiths, University of London. His most recent book is Rediscovering Enoch." The Ancient Jewish Past from the Fifteenth to Nineteenth Centuries, and he has written extensively on various early modern topics, including heresy, crypto-Jews, and Judaizing in 17th Century England among protestant sects. Dr Hessayon's current research includes a monograph on the reception of Jacob Boehme's writings in the English-speaking world during the 17th century and a major project entitled 'Providence, Mission, Race and Settlement in the Atlantic World, c.1580-c.1690. '
Dr. Jessica Roitman
Dr. Jessica Vance Roitman is Professor of Jewish Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is a historian of early modern and modern Jewish History, and her research focuses on Jews and Jewish communities in the Dutch Caribbean. She is interested in issues of race, ethnicity, minoritization, slavery, and colonialism and has published extensively on Caribbean history, marronage, enslavement, and Jews and colonialism. She is also co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Early American History and on the Program Committee of the Association for Jewish Studies. Her recent articles are “The Ties that Bind: Itineraries of Freedom in the Dutch Caribbean” in the Yearbook of Transnational History and "There are no secrets here: Sex and Scandal in the Streets of Curaçao" in Studia Judaica, and she wrote “Introduction to the Special Issue: Engaging Empire: Histories and Historiography of Jews in the Dutch Colonies, 1700–1945” in Studia Rosenthaliana.
Dr. Diego Lucci
Dr. Diego Lucci is a professor at the American University in Bulgaria and has previously been a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London and the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Hamburg. He is also a permanent fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of “Scripture and Deism,” a widely cited classic on English deism, and his book on the Enlightenment debate on Jewish emancipation is an important contribution to the study of Jewish-Gentile relations in eighteenth-century Europe. His research focuses on the philosophy and intellectual history of the Age of Enlightenment, particularly on English deism and John Locke. He is the author of three books and over sixty journal articles and book chapters, and he is the editor or co-editor of six volumes. His most recent monograph is John Locke’s Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Michael Thurmond
CEO Thurmond, a sharecropper's son, holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and religion from Paine College and a Juris Doctor from the University of South Carolina’s School of Law. Michael has spent over twenty years exploring Georgia history and was awarded by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the research and preservation of African American Georgia history. In his most recent book, James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia—a Founder’s Journey from Slave Trader to Abolitionist, Thurmond explores the unique contributions that Oglethorpe made to the anti-slavery movement.