Can we kvell a little? Mazel tov to JHE Contributor Michele Migliori, who has been awarded a prestigious President’s Fellowship at Bar Ilan University to work on his PhD.
His research will be on synagogues in Latin America built by immigrant communities between the 1890s and 1950s: how their architecture reproduces that of European synagogues, and the relationship between their architecture and immigrant identity.
Michele’s PhD supervisor will be Prof. Ilia Rodov, of the Department of Jewish Art.
Awarded by the Bar Ilan president, the Fellowship is highly competitive; there were hundreds of applications and grants were offered to only a small number of winners. The criteria for the selection of candidates were their high intellectual potential and strong academic record.
Michele’s academic work for his Masters Degree from ELTE in Budapest also dealt with Latin American Jewish history. It was “The Forgotten Emigration: European Jewish Refugees in Ecuador and Colombia.”
In April, he wrote a long essay for JHE on the Jewish heritage in Ecuador and how it related to European Jewish immigrants — (European) Jewish heritage in an “unknown country”.
Michele works with JHE director Ruth Ellen Gruber on a daily basis; he manages the JHE Italian language Facebook group Beni Culturali Ebraici in Europa and provides a weekly Italian language summary of JHE news.