Dr. Angy Cohen, the Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2019-20 academic year, has a BA in Psychology and a MA in Philosophy. She received her PhD in 2017 by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid in a Joint PhD program. Her doctoral dissertation was a comparative ethnographic study of the relation between memory and identity among Spanish-Moroccan Jews that emigrated to Israel and Argentina. She studied the impact the experience of immigration had on the memories the interviewees evoked in the interviews. Angy Cohen has received different fellowships and awards, including the Gaon Prize for research projects about Judeo-Spanish culture and the Rothschild (Hanadiv) doctoral fellowship.
Besides her academic activities, she is a member of the Beit Midrash (House of Learning) Arevot, lead by Sephardi women who explore Sephardi answers to the challenges of Modernity.
During her stay at the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies she was preparing the publication of her PhD dissertation and was working on the Spanish-Moroccan religious attitudes in the context of the encounter of Sephardi Judaism and Modernity as it occurred during the colonial period in Morocco. In addition, she gave a talk on Spaniards, Moroccans or Israelis?
Some of her publications include:
- Cohen. A. "On Belonging and Other Dreams. The Ambiguous Positions of the Jews in «Spanish Morocco»". in Teresa Pinheriro and Silvina Gesser (eds) Special Issue in Contemporary Sephardic Identities. Contemporary Jewry [forthcoming]
- Cohen, A. and Leshem, R. "The rebellion of memories in The Emmigrant's Lament by Moís Benarroch". Lo Sguardo, XXIX. [forthcoming]
- Cohen, A. "Hospitality and Feminism through a Jewish lens: an experiential essay". Approaching Religion. [accepted with changes]
- Cohen, A. (2019) Beit Midrash Arevot: the Torah, voice and language of Sephardi mothers. LVS La Voix Sépharade, Montreal, Canada. [in French]
We look forward to seeing all the great results from her research.