Advisory Board

As Head of Collections Engagement at Jewish Museum London, I am responsible for all aspects of Collections Management, Collections Care, and Collections Engagement. This includes ensuring that records are kept updated and that the collection is stored correctly and can be made accessible for research, developing the collection with new acquisitions, and preparing items for loans and displays across the country and beyond.

 

My career started in classical and commercial archaeology before I moved into museums and collections management, with a focus on public engagement. My previous roles include working at the Museum of London Archaeological Archive where I co-created award-winning volunteer/engagement projects, and Layers of London, an online mapping project crowdsourcing the everyday histories of people and places.

I work to make the field of medieval Anglo-Jewish history more accessible. 

My doctoral work examined the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities between 1194 and 1275/6. Currently I am writing a book exploring Jews and Christians as neighbours in the towns of medieval England and I am also editing a volume of twelve essays on medieval Lincoln Jewry and co-editing Hebrew and Hebrew-Latin documents from the same period.

I speak regularly at national and international conferences, organise panels on all aspects of medieval Anglo-Jewish history, and have published a series of article-length studies exploring acknowledgements of debt, the archae system, and the social structure of the London Jewry. 

I deliver regular lectures for various branches of the Historical Association and, in 2023, Professor Miri Rubin (JHSE Chair) and I convened an online short course on The Jews of Medieval England: Murder, Money, and Expulsion which ran fortnightly over five sessions. I co-convene the Graduate Seminar in Anglo-Jewish History in the Middle Ages at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and am also a board member of the MedievalJewishStudiesNow! blog.

I am a historian of modern Jewish life, with particular interest in the Holocaust and its legacies; Jewish refugees in Africa; Jews, racism, and colonialism; and Jews in South Africa. I obtained my D. Phil in Modern History from the University of Oxford and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan. 

Before coming to UCL, I was Karten Professor of Modern History and Director of the Parkes Institute for Jewish/ non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton. I am editor of the journal Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English-Speaking Jewry, with Adam Mendelsohn (University of Cape Town) and Avril Alba (University of Sydney).

I am an Associate Professor/Reader in Modern History within the School of Humanities at De Montfort University and a social historian with particular interest in the history of race, ethnicity and immigration in Britain and sport/leisure history in Western society.

 

I am the author of two monographs focusing on modern British Jewish history: Sport and British Jewry: Integration, Ethnicity and anti-Semitism, 1890-1970  and The 'Estranged Generation'? Social and Generational Change in Interwar British Jewry, which investigates the social history of the British Jewish community in the interwar years; I am also working on my third monograph which will look at the history of British Boxing.  I have written articles for numerous historical journals, have spoken widely about my research and related subjects, review for several academic journals and undertake consultancy and advisory work for a number of museums, funding bodies and government bodies.

I am a rabbi, writer and broadcaster.  I was minister of Maidenhead Synagogue for many years and am now Convenor of the Reform Beit Din, the rabbinic court serving synagogues throughout the UK. 

I am chaplain to the Jewish Police Association, President of the Accord Coalition which campaigns for inclusive education, and past Chair of Dignity in Dying which calls for assisted dying to be legal in the UK.  For several years I was a judge for the Times Preacher of the Year Award and was a member of the BBC’s Standing Conference on Religion and Belief (2009-12).  I am a past Chairman of the Assembly of Rabbis UK (2007-9) and was recently appointed as an Adviser to the Religion Media Centre.

Among my 19 books are The Jews of England, Faith and Practice: A Guide to Reform Judaism Today and Royal Jews: a thousand years of Jewish life in and around the Royal County of Berkshire. In 2004, I received the MBE for my work in pioneering a more welcoming attitude to mixed-faith couples, a theme covered in my book Till Faith Us Do Part.  My recent books are Confessions of a Rabbi and The Naked Rabbi.

I write for The Times and The Jewish Chronicle and am often heard or seen on the BBC.

My family has been an integral part of Manchester Jewry and its history for many generations.  One of my great grandfathers was a founder of the Higher Broughton Synagogue and another was the secretary of the Great Synagogue and then the Manchester Congregation of British Jews, giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration on May 4th 1903. My parents were founder members of the South Manchester Reform Synagogue.

My paternal grandmother was a suffragette and one of my great uncles was on the Gestapo 'Hit List' for Britain; his brother, a senior Jewish civil servant, was killed in the bombing of the King David Hotel in July 1946.

 

On leaving Manchester in 1972, I became involved in the Jewish East End Project and in 1983 created the Museum of the Jewish East End at the Sternberg Centre in Finchley, which later became the London Museum of Jewish Life and eventually the Jewish Museum.

In 1999 I was invited to join the Council of the JHSE and became its Chair in 2010, serving in that position for six years.  In 1992 I was involved in the creation of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain and was recently named President Emeritus.

In 2015 I was invited to be a research scholar for a month at the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati where I made a comparative study of the constitutions of early American and British synagogues. 

I am a PhD student at the University of Basel where I am writing my thesis on a topic in the field of Jewish sports history: The Depiction and Discourse regarding Jewish Athletes and Jewish Sports in the English Press, 1890-1945. My research sits at the intersection of sports history and Jewish and Women’s studies.

I studied Modern History and International Relations at the University of Bremen and the University of Groningen..

In addition to my role on the advisory board, I am a member of the JHSE’s New Generation Group (NGG). From 2022 to 2024, I also chaired the NGG committee.