Joseph O'Hara

Joseph O'Hara is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Palaeography at the University of Oxford, affiliated with the Faculty of Linguistics and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. His work bridges medieval Jewish book history, Arabic linguistics, and digital humanities.

• Current roles: Junior Research Fellow at Oxford
• Education: Undergraduate and doctorate in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic linguistics at Oxford

His research focuses on Hebrew palaeography, Judaeo-Arabic dialects, and manuscript studies, including analysis of colophons, ink recipes, and booklists. He contributes to the Hebrew Palaeography Album (HebrewPal), a digital tool for computational analysis of Hebrew script, part of the ERC-Synergy MiDRASH project.

He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC/DFG-funded 'History of the Jewish Book in the Islamicate World' and as a supervisor in phonetics and morphology at the University of Cambridge.

Scientific Awards

• Fellowship from Digital Scholarship at Oxford (DiSc)

Joseph teaches weekly seminars on medieval Hebrew manuscripts and has conducted training in Rome and online. His expertise in phonetics, phonology, and morphology is complemented by technical work in digital annotation and computational humanities. He has held research assistant roles at the universities of Oxford and Sheffield.