Historian · University of Haifa

Uriel Simonsohn

My work began in the archives of early Islamic history. Today I also direct two centers at the University of Haifa, where I work with religious leaders, educators, and colleagues.

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Historical Studies and the founding director of the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies (2020) and the Frieze Center for Shared Society (2025).

Academic home

University of Haifa

Doctorate

Princeton University, 2008

Leadership

Founder of two academic centers

Recent volume

Cultural Brokerage (2026)

Biography

Biography

I received my PhD from Princeton in 2008. My early research asked why Christians and Jews under Islamic rule sometimes took disputes to Muslim authorities, and how their own leaders responded. That became A Common Justice (2011). Later work on conversion and mixed families led to Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East (2023).

Postdoctoral years at Leiden and the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in Jerusalem gave me time to pursue these questions. Since joining the University of Haifa in 2013, my research has examined inter-religious kinship ties and women’s religious agency, including how women shaped religious identities and practices within and across family relationships. I have also worked on cultural brokerage—the movement of knowledge and practices between religious communities—and co-edited a volume on the subject in 2026.

At the University of Haifa, my work with religious leaders and educators began to take an institutional form. In 2020 I founded the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies. Its Interfaith Ambassadors program brings Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, and Ahmadi participants into graduate study and practical projects. The Haifa Multi-Faith Forum became especially active after October 7, 2023. In 2025 I founded the Frieze Center to extend this work into research, university courses, and public institutions. I continue to teach and publish as a historian alongside directing these centers.

Intellectual profile

Research questions

My publications examine conversion, legal authority, kinship, and the movement of ideas between communities.

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At the University of Haifa

The centers I direct

The Laboratory began with the study of religion and grew into graduate education and local religious forums. The Frieze Center, founded five years later, works with colleagues in other disciplines and public institutions.