I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern & African History at Tel Aviv University, and since December 2019 I am the Head of the Zvi Yazetz School of Historical Studies.
My research is at the juncture of three fields of historical research: the early modern Ottoman Empire; Islamic medicine, health and illness; and Muslim environmental history. My final goal is to unravel social and cultural realities in the Turkish and Arabic speaking worlds. Grants from the Israel Science Foundation and the German-Israeli Foundation facilitate these research projects.
My current research explores how medicine was managed, organized, and supervised in the Ottoman Empire of the early modern period. I ask what was considered proper medical care, and examine who was involved in creating and maintaining a medical standard. I trace the evolution of bureaucratic patterns (alongside the rise of the state machinery), and how these do not replace but integrate into the perceptions and practices of those who are not experts, ie the patients and their families, who continue to be an important factor in shaping medical professional consensus.
In my various administrative positions, I aim at contributing to an enriching and supportive framework for faculty and students to make the most of their intellectual challenges and social experiences at TAU. As the Head of the School, I wish to advance historical research at TAU and in Israel as a whole, and to promote the teaching of history in Israeli academia. I embrace our role as public historians to contribute to a more complex, humane and humanistic understanding of our realities.
I am also a very proud mother of two princesses, Ella and Daphna. I share with them and with my husband my love of kebap meat, Turkish music, and lots and lots of books.