معرفی
Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner is an Affiliate Lecturer in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge and serves as Executive Director of the Woolf Institute. She holds a PhD from Cambridge (2007) on mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic letters and has held roles including Senior Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute and Research Associate at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit (part-time). Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics of Judaeo-Arabic and Yiddish, scribal practices, and Jewish-Muslim relations in Egypt and Muslim Spain. She has authored/co-authored works such as A Handbook and Reader of Ottoman Arabic (2021) and Scribes as Agents of Language Change (2013). Her work bridges academic and public engagement, including lectures at the Hay on Wye Festival and contributions to TV/radio programs like BBC3's The Essay.
Education: Magistra Artium (Semitic Philology, Islamic Studies, Indo-European Studies) from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (2001), PhD (Cambridge, 2007). Professional roles include Editor-in-Chief of A l-Masāq and Vice-President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean. Key research areas: Genizah manuscripts, multilingualism in medieval Mediterranean contexts, and language contact phenomena.
Research interests emphasize epistolary practices, scribal agency, and linguistic diversity in Jewish communities. She has organized conferences on topics like 'Ottoman Arabic' and 'Merchants of Innovation,' and her work often intersects with interdisciplinary studies of medieval Mediterranean cultures.
