Dr. Michal Friedman

Biography

Michal Friedman is the Jack Buncher Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies, specializing in Jewish Diasporic history, particularly the Sephardi Spanish-speaking Jewish communities and the history and culture of Spain. His research and teaching focus on the history of interactions among ethnic and religious minorities in Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas, particularly through the lens of diaspora and nationhood. Born in Israel and raised in Tel Aviv and New York City, Friedman completed his university studies in Spain and received his Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University. Before joining Carnegie Mellon University as a faculty member, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and The Seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Oxford. His book manuscript, based on his doctoral dissertation, titled "Recovering Jewish Spain: Politics, Historiography, and the Institutionalization of the Jewish Past in Spain (1845-1935)," examines the initiatives to recover the Jewish past and legacy of 'Sefarad' in modern Spain, exploring how history was mobilized by both Spaniards and Jews in efforts to construct claims to the Spanish patria. He has authored numerous book chapters and journal articles and co-founded the organizing committee for Genealogies Sepharad—a group of scholars and writers exploring the meanings of Sepharad and the Spanish-Portuguese history and culture of the Sephardi diaspora from the 19th century to the present. Additionally, he established a collaboration with the Centropa Archive, a digitized collection of 1,200 interviews and 20,000 photographs documenting the Jewish experience in Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, and the Balkans during and after the Holocaust.

Research Interests

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