Dr. Avital Davidovich Eshed is a former Research Fellow at the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a position she has held since 2009, and a lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies Program at Tel Aviv University. In 2018, she was a visiting lecturer on Women’s Studies and Judaism at Harvard Divinity School WSRP.

Dr. Davidovich Eshed’s research focuses on the history of women, gender, and sexuality in medieval Jewish culture and the development of these categories in halakha, ritual, midrash, and literature. Her forthcoming book, On Virginity: Gender, Body and Identity in Medieval Jewish Culture, will be published in 2021 by Carmel and Bar-Ilan University Press.