Spanish

The goal of the project Jewish Cultures across Mediterranean Europe (JMED) is to strengthen Judaic scholarly networks existing in the diverse European Mediterranean regions with different traditions of institutionalization of Jewish studies, to foster education and training, and to encourage the mobility of a new generation of researchers and teachers.

The project focuses on the diversity of the medieval, early modern, and modern European Mediterranean Jewish regional experience, by examining common features and divergences in a combined eastward and westward perspectives. The initiatives planned are channeled into three thematic strands regarding: a) Jewish life in the past (and its repercussions and implications on the present); b) Transmission and mediation of Jewish knowledge and textuality; and c) Uses and interpretations of Jewish material culture.

Jewish Cultures across Mediterranean Europe (JMED) is implemented at the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council) and the UCM (Complutense University), both leading Spanish research and educational institutions based in Madrid. The project promotes a broad assortment of activities ranging from scholarly conferences to the dissemination of Jewish subjects of interest to a broader audience, across different locales throughout the Iberian and the Balkan countries, loosely linked by a Sephardic Jewish heritage partially rooted in the diverse Hispano-Jewish experience.

In its early stages, the project envisages a different range of initiatives: short-term bursaries offered to students and scholars on a doctoral and post-doctoral level on a competitive basis; fostering seminars and workshops addressed to students privileging interdisciplinary approaches, otherwise problematical to insert within a regular university Jewish studies program; and extending invitation to internationally renowned scholars on the cutting edge in their respective subject to teach a specialization course in Madrid, filling the gap regarding fields underrepresented in Jewish studies academic programs.

Listen here to the interview made by Radio Sefarad to the directors of the project.

Directors:
– Javier Castaño (CSIC)
– Pablo Torijano (UCM)

Project manager:
– Irene Rincón