Jennifer Grayson

Jennifer Grayson is an Assistant Professor of Medieval/Early Modern Jewish History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), holding the Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstat Fellowship at the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies. Previously, she served as the Aaron D. Panken Assistant Professor of History at Hebrew Union College and held a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of History at Xavier University, both in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Her research focuses on the social and political history of Arabic-speaking Jewish communities in the medieval Islamic world, particularly through the Cairo Geniza documents. Her current book manuscript, At the King’s Gate: The Jews of Abbasid Baghdad, examines the evolving relationship between Jews and the Muslim government in Iraq (750–1258). She earned a PhD in History from Johns Hopkins University (2017), an MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Cambridge (2013) as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and an AB in History and Late Antique Cultures from Brown University (2011).

Her publications explore themes such as medieval Jewish court bankers, rabbinic authority, and the origins of Hebrew language. Key works include contributions to Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient and the Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics.

Awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Grayson’s expertise bridges medieval Jewish and Islamic studies, with a focus on institutional and socio-political dynamics. She collaborates with the Carolina Center for Jewish Studies and maintains interdisciplinary research on rabbinic Judaism’s development within Abbasid contexts.