Professor Avner Ofrath

Professor Avner Ofrath (Free University of Berlin) Fall Term 2027 (Jewish Studies) 

Avner Ofrath studied history at the FU Berlin and obtained his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2018. He was lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bremen and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan before returning to the FU Berlin in 2023 as part of the fourth cohort of the Alfred Landecker Lecturer Program.

Alongside his academic writing, Avner has published essays, translations, and commentaries on Jewish, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern history and culture in English, German, and Hebrew. He contributed a series of articles to the Israeli online magazine Alaxon and co-translated into German a history textbook on the Israel-Palestine conflict written in parallel narratives by Israeli and Palestinian teachers.

His first book, "Colonial Algeria and the Politics of Citizenship," redefines state membership and legal status in France’s key colonial territory, using a diverse array of sources in French, Arabic, and Judeo-Arabic to illustrate how Algeria shaped the French notion of citizenship and witnessed some of the most powerful struggles to retain, revive and accommodate difference within the Republic.