UVA Jewish Studies Welcomes Two Fall 2026 Visiting Fellows

We are looking forward to welcoming two visiting graduate PhD fellows during the Fall 2026 semester. Joining us for the first five weeks of the semester will be Katie Brown, a PhD student in Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, whose research focuses on gender and noble death in Jewish and Roman antiquities. Later in the semester, we will welcome Bilal Akar, whose dissertation, In Search of a Kurdish–Jewish Princess: Decolonizing the Archives and Repertoires of Leila Bederkhan, focuses on the intersections of Kurdish and Jewish performance across the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and their connected geographies.

You can learn more about our visiting fellowships and previous fellows by visiting this page.