Jewish StudiesProgram

Biography:

I am an interdisciplinary scholar who works at the intersections of Applied Linguistics, Jewish Studies, African Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Before joining The Pennsylvania State University, I held positions at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. My research aims to understand how power (in)balances are reproduced and contested through meaning-making resources (language, visuality, the body etc.).

Together with Professor Erez Levon (University of Bern) and Dr. Roey Gafter (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), I have published extensively on issues of sexuality in Israel, where I was Visiting Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2019 and 2022. I am currently working on a project about the politics of collective remembering, focusing in particular on the commemoration of the victims of the Shoah in Italy and Sweden.  I also collaborate with the Swedish Yiddishist Sarah Schulman (Dos Nisele Förlag, Stockholm) on a project about Yiddish in Sweden.

Since 2020 I have been editing the journal Language in Society (together with Susan Ehrlich, York University).