The Team
Prof. Tamar Herzig
Principle Investigator
Professor Tamar Herzig (PhD, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005) is the Konrad Adenauer Chair in Comparative European History at Tel Aviv University, where she also directs the Fred W. Lessing Institute for European History and Civilization. Her research interests lie at the intersection of social, religious, and gender history, with a particular emphasis on the persecution of marginalized groups in Mediterranean Europe. Her earlier work has explored inquisitorial networks, the gendering of demonological notions, religious dissent, the policing of sodomy, religious conversion, and Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations. She is the author of Savonarola’s Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 2008; Italian edition published by Carocci in 2014); ‘Christ Transformed into a Virgin Woman’: Lucia Brocadelli, Heinrich Institoris, and the Defense of the Faith (Storia e Letteratura, 2013), and A Convert’s Tale: Art, Crime, and Jewish Apostasy in Renaissance Italy (Harvard, 2019), recently published in Italian (Viella, 2023) and Hebrew (Magnes, 2023). This book was awarded honorable mention for the Renaissance Society of America’s Gordan Book Prize and won the American Historical Association’s Dorothy Rosenberg Prize. In 2019, Herzig won the Kadar Family Award for Outstanding Research for her work on religious conversion and in 2021 she received the Michael Bruno Memorial Award for her notable contribution to the study of Renaissance history. Her article, “Slavery and Interethnic Sexual Violence: A Multiple Perpetrator Rape in Seventeenth-Century Livorno,” American Historical Review 127:1 (2022), pp. 94-122, was awarded Article of the Month by the Mediterranean Seminar and the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Best Article Award for 2022. In 2023, Herzig received the Fiuggi Storia Europa prize at a ceremony held at the Italian House of Deputies and in 2024 she was co-winner of Cherasco International Prize in History.
Dr. Benedetta Chizzolini
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Benedetta Chizzolini is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project FemSMed. In November 2024, she completed her doctoral studies in Early Modern History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (joint degree with the University of Padua). Her doctoral dissertation, entitled: “Between Cure and Control: Doctors, Convicts and Slaves of Tuscan and Papal Galleys (1571-1771)”, investigates the theories and practices of medical vigilance enacted towards galley slaves and convicts in 16th-18th century Italy. Between July 2021 and July 2023, she was a research assistant at the Institute for Medical Humanities of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Drittmittelproject „Vigilanz als Ideal, Strategie und Methode in der medizinischen Kultur der Vormoderne“ of the SFB 1369 „Vigilanzkulturen: Transformationen. Räume. Techniken“ (LMU- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München). Between July 2023-December 2023 she held a Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung at the Herzog August Bibliothek -Wolfenbüttel Forschungs- und Studienstätte für europäische Kulturgeschichte (Wolfenbüttel, Deutschland), and then a Max-Weber-Stiftung at the Deutsches Historisches Institut of Rome. In 2024, she was an Eva Schler Fellow at the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy. Benedetta’s research interests include the history of slavery, history of labor, history of sexuality, gender history, social history, and the history of medicine. Within the framework of FemSMed, her postdoctoral research will be devoted to investigating the social and cultural implications of the presence of female domestic slaves exploited for sexual purposes in the conceptualization of filial, romantic and consanguineous kinship; as well as to examining the agency of female slaves in early modern Catholic societies.
Publications:
Chizzolini, Benedetta, ״Navigating Ambiguities: Fluid Identities and Legal Nuances among Galley Rowers (Great Duchy of Tuscany, 16th–18th centuries)״, in Journal of Global Slavery 10 (2025): 53–79.
Chizzolini, Benedetta, “Medicare, osservare, controllare: Medici e galeotti a Livorno tra XVI–XVIII secolo,” in Jake Dyble, Alessandro Lo Bartolo, Elia Morelli (eds.), Il teatro della Turchia- Visioni del Vicino Oriente in età moderna (Rome: Carocci, 2024).
Chizzolini, Benedetta, “The “Taglio degli schiavi”: Evaluating the Value of Galley Slaves in Early Modern Livorno (17th- 18th centuries)” – Blog post in the Medicine and the Making of Race blog (King’s College London), 2024.
Chizzolini, Benedetta, “Circa il peccato aborrito dalle bestie: Rappresentazioni, discorsi e strategie punitive nelle galere pontificie (XVI-XVIII secolo),” in Clorinda Donato, Vincenzo Lagioia, Ulf R. Hansonn (eds.), Non con l’autorità ma col far vedere le cose: Identità e rappresentazioni nel Settecento (Rome, Viella, forthcoming).
Dr. Joseph Jackson-Eade
Postdoctoral Researcher
I am an Early Modern historian interested in communication, empire, and (dis)information, with a special focus on the Iberian worlds and their archives—spaces of intense multilingual contact and friction, and among the richest repositories of “entangled archivalities” in the sixteenth century.
In 2024, I completed my PhD in History at the University of Bologna under the supervision of Prof. Giuseppe Marcocci (Oxford) and Prof. Jorge Flores (Lisbon). My research focused on Portuguese imperial correspondence produced between 1500 and 1530, showing how emerging networks of multilingual agents—interpreters, scribes, messengers—distinctively shaped Iberian imperial spaces, both locally and globally. I argue that these agents’ tortuous trajectories and multifaceted rhetorics deepen and complicate our understanding of early modern imperial statecraft.
As a postdoctoral fellow in the FemSMed project, I trace the dispersion of female enslavement and trafficking via Lisbon to Southern Spain, and from there to other parts of Mediterranean Catholic Europe. Through extensive paleographic work and detailed data aggregation from Portuguese and Spanish Inquisition archives, I work on revealing these enslaved women's often tormented sociabilities, and the articulation of their social networks across Counter-Reformation Iberia and beyond.
Nil Abend
Doctoral Researcher
Nil Abend is a Doctoral candidate at the School of Historical Studies at the Tel Aviv University. He holds a BA in Islamic and Middle East Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in Middle Eastern and African History form Tel Aviv University. In 2023-2024, he was a visiting fellow at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies in Bonn (BCDSS). His doctoral thesis, written under the joint supervision of Profs. Camilla Adang, Miriam Eliav-Feldon, and Tamar Herzig, analyzes the role that conversion has played in the relationship between enslaved people, their masters, and secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the 17th-century Western Mediterranean. It focuses on Christian and Muslim people owned, kept, sold, and bought by Jewish masters living under both Muslim and Christian rule and on the ways and mechanisms by which conversion and confessional affiliation were used by these three actors in relation to one another. Through the life stories of these enslaved women and men, the dissertation brings into discussion some analytical and conceptual frameworks, such as asymmetrical dependency, agency and interagency, and intersectionality. By so doing, the dissertation aims to fill a lacuna in scholarship regarding the lives of enslaved Christians and Muslims owned by Jewish masters in general, and the experiences of domestic female slaves in particular.
Eynav Ovadia
Doctoral Researcher
Eynav Ovadia is currently a doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University’s School of Historical Studies. She obtained her Master’s degree from Lindenwood University. Her M.A. thesis, completed under the direction of Profs. Steven Cody, James Hutson, and Sarah Cantor, is entitled Flowering in the Springtime: An Iconographical Analysis of Boticelli’s Primavera and explores the use of the Primavera as a didactic guide to female sexuality and sensuality within the context of marriage. The thesis includes an analysis of both visual imagery and archival documents from fifteenth-century Florence. Eynav’s doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Prof. Tamar Herzig within the framework of the ERC project FemSMed, explores the intersection of enslavement and prostitution in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Dr. Katherine Aron-Beller
Senior Research Fellow
Originally from London, Dr. Katherine Aron-Beller FRHistS completed her PhD at the University of Haifa and has served as Visiting Assistant Professor at the George Washington University and as Senior Lecturer at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University and the Overseas School of Tel Aviv University. Her areas of expertise include the Papal Inquisition and Jewish-Christian relations in the early modern era. Her research as part of the FemSMed project involves uncovering the voices of enslaved women who were interrogated by the Roman Inquisition and were lodged within the Houses of Catechumens in Italian cities. These female voices, presence and positions will add to the crucial but scarcely known studies on enslaved women and intercommunal relations in early modern Europe.
Book Publications:
Katherine Aron-Beller, Christian Images and their Jewish Desecrators (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).
https://www.pennpress.org/9781512824100/christian-images-and-their-jewish-desecrators/
Katherine Aron-Beller and Christopher F. Black (eds.).The Roman Inquisition: Centre versus Peripheries (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/34442?language=en
Katherine Aron-Beller Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena 1598-1638 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).
https://www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781526151629/9781526151629.xml
Relevant Article Publications:
Katherine Aron-Beller “The Practicing Jew in Early Modern Inquisitorial Strategy,” in Bernard Dov Cooperman, Serena di Nepi and Germano Maifreda (eds) Jews and State Building: Early Modern Italy and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 182-204.
Katherine Aron-Beller “Sodomy and Homosociality among Jewish and Christian Men: The Proceedings Against Lazarro de Norsa (Modena, 1670),” Quest 24 (2023): 61-86.
https://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/5-Q24_Aron-Beller.pdf
Katherine Aron-Beller “Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the Seventeenth Century,” Religions 14 (2023): 614-628.
Katherine Aron-Beller, Sopra l’imputatione del delitto di sodomia con christiano: The proceedings against Lazarro de Norsa (Modena, 1670)," in Denise Bezzina and Michael Gasperoni (eds.) Genesis, XX/1 Mascolinità mediterranee (secoli XII-XVII) (2021):65-93.
Dr. Inbar Strul-Dabull
Research Fellow
Dr. Inbar Strul-Dabull is a historian of early modern Italy. Her research explores gender, education, and charitable institutions. She obtained her PhD, with a dissertation on “Gender and Charity in Medicean Florence: Montalvo’s Educational Institutions as a Case Study” from Tel Aviv University in 2024, and went on to pursue her postdoctoral research in Florence, Italy, as Beatrice Solomon Fellow at the Medici Archive Project.
Trained as an Urban and Regional Planner (M.Sc.), Dr. Strul-Dabull brings a unique spatial perspective to her historical research. Her work has been recognized through various competitive awards, including the Chutick Scholarship for Outstanding Women Doctoral Students, the Foundation for Higher Education & Culture, and the Thomas Arthur Arnold Fund for Excellence in History.
As a Research Fellow at FemSMed, Dr. Strul-Dabull leads the development and management of a comprehensive digital repository on female enslavement in Mediterranean Catholic Europe. She applies advanced digital humanities methodologies for transforming fragmentary historical evidence into structured, searchable data, enabling cross-referencing and pattern identification across previously disconnected archival sources. This endeavor aims not only to preserve and organize crucial historical evidence, but also to recover the experiences of women and girls who have been systematically marginalized in conventional historical narratives.
Lisa Molina
Graduate Researcher
Lisa Molina is currently completing her Master’s thesis in early modern history at Tel Aviv University. Her M.A. research, supervised by Prof. Tamar Herzig, examines the impact of enslaved black Africans’ sartorial presence on women’s fashion in early modern Italy.
Yasmine Segol
Graduate Researcher
Yasmine Segol has completed her B.A in History (Summa Cum Laude) at Tel Aviv University and is currently writing her M.A. thesis in early modern French history, under the supervision of Prof. Tamar Herzig. Her thesis deals with the case of enslaved women in Catherine de Medici’s court in sixteenth-century Paris. In addition, she has developed and currently maintains the FemSMed project website.
Eliah Jaffe
Graduate Researcher
Eliah Jaffe completed his B.A in History (Summa Cum Laude) at Tel Aviv University and is currently writing his MA on the phenomenon of female enslavement in France toward the end of the Old Regime. He is particularly interested in studying the daily life of enslaved women and their integration into their social environment.
Mia Joskowicz
Digital Humanities Researcher
Mia Joskowicz is developing the digital humanities frameworks for FemSMed. Currently a doctoral candidate at Tel Aviv University’s School of Historical Studies, her research focuses on the history of Mathematics in early modern Europe. She holds an MA in History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas and a BSc in Computer Science and Statistics, both from Tel Aviv University.
Didi Atsmon
Research Manager
Didi Atsmon is the research manager of FemSMed. She holds a master’s degree (Summa cum laude) in history from Tel Aviv University. Her M.A. thesis, Dark Matter: Aesthetics and Enslavement at the Court of Isabella d’Este, explored how enslaved African children were used as exotic possessions to display taste and assert power in 15th- and 16th-century Mantua.
FemSMed Alumni
Dr. Aaron Stamper
Postdoctoral fellow during the academic year 2024/2025
Dr. Aaron Stamper is a social, religious, and sensory historian specializing in interreligious relations, race, and gender in late medieval and early modern Iberia and the Mediterranean. In 2023, he completed his PhD in History at Princeton University under the direction of Prof. Anthony Grafton. His dissertation project was the first comprehensive sensory history of early modern European conquest and colonization, from the reign of the Spanish Catholic Monarchs (r. 1474-1516) to the final expulsion of Granada’s converted Muslims– referred to as Moriscos–in 1609-1614. His work has been supported by the U.S. Fulbright Research Award and the Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship. Aaron was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the European Research Council fundedproject, “Female Slavery in Mediterranean Catholic Europe, 1500-1800” (FemSMed), at The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University. His research for the project drew from Spanish archives to recover the lived experiences of enslaved Morisca women during the 16th and 17th centuries. Their voices, he shows, add to a crucial but scarce scholarly literature on the enslavement of minority women and their roles in shaping collective identities and intercommunal relations in early modern Spain, the Mediterranean, and Europe.
Publications:
Stamper, Aaron. “Melodies of Doves, Clamor from the Towers: The Dawn of Granada’s Sonic Conversion.” Sixteenth Century Journal 53, no. 3 (Autumn 2022): 743-765.
Stamper, Aaron. “Review of Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe, edited by Tess Knighton and Ascensión Manzuela-Anguita.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 78, no. 2 (June 2019): 227-245.
Stamper, Aaron. “A Muslim in Europe A Christian in North Africa: Experiencing the Early Modern Mediterranean.” The Spain-North Africa Project Bulletin, December 29, 2019