I.e. (irene) Zwiep

Biography

During the 1980s, I studied Classics and Hebrew and Jewish studies in Amsterdam and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Upon my Ph.D. in 1995, I received a Frances Yates Fellowship at the Warburg Institute in London. Since 1997 I have held the chair in Hebrew and Jewish Studies (formally: of Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac languages and cultures from the 1st century AD) in the Hebrew department of the University of Amsterdam. Since 2008, I am also working as the director of the Institute of Culture and History, the largest of the faculty's research institutes. In my 'spare' time I serve, among others, as chairman of the Academic Committee of the Levisson rabbinical training programme, as chairman of the Menasseh ben Israel Institute (a joint venture by UvA and the Jewish Historical Museum Amsterdam), and as a member of the Advisory Board of the Jewish Educational Centre 'Crescas'.

Research Interest

Over the years I have specialized in (early) modern Jewish intellectual history, with the history of Hebrew literacy and linguistics and, more recently, of 19th- and 20th-century European Jewish scholarship and identity as my main areas of interest.