

Angy Cohen, PhD
Inaugural Hy and Jenny Belzberg
Postdoctoral Associate in Israel Studies
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
University of Calgary

About me
I am a researcher on contemporary Sephardic culture. Through a combination of ethnographic research and text analysis, I have studied Sephardi Modernity with a focus on the Jewish communities of the Maghreb. I have also studied Sephardi culture in Israel and Sephardi women's movements. I have a multidisciplinary academic background in Psychology, Philosophy, Anthropology and Jewish Studies. My research is focused on personal narratives and identity construction.
I received my PhD in 2017 from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Autonomous University of Madrid, in a Joint PhD program. My doctoral dissertation was a comparative ethnographic study of life stories among Spanish-Moroccan Jews that emigrated to Israel and Argentina. In the last two years, I have been working on personal narratives of Sephardi/Mizrahi women and the development of the so-called "traditionist feminism" in Israel.
I have held postdoctoral positions at the School of Cultural Studies of Tel Aviv University and the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies at Concordia University (Montreal). I am currently a Postdoctoral Associate at University of Calgary, where I teach a course on women and Judaism. At the moment, I am working on the manuscript of my book about personal narratives of Spanish-Moroccan Jews in Israel and Argentina, from a comparative approach.