My relationship with the Swedish Theological Institute began in 2015, when I was conducting research on Christian-Jewish relations in Jerusalem. At the time, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University, and the Swedish Theological Institute served as a home base in Jerusalem during that time. During the two years of my postdoctoral research, from 2015-2017, I often traveled to Jerusalem for research, and each time I was welcomed warmly to the STI. In 2018 I began a tenure-track position at Merrimack College in the United States, and in my new position, I was fortunate enough to return to Jerusalem frequently to continue my independent research and writing.
When I arrived in Jerusalem in February of 2022, I hosted the first in-person academic conference at the STI in two years, entitled “Jerusalem in Memory and Eschatology: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Visions of the Past and Future of Jerusalem.” The conference was held in the form of an academic round-table, in a hybrid in-person and remote format.
Following this inaugural conference, I dedicated the remainder of my time in Jerusalem to independent research and writing, working on a book manuscript entitled The Idea of the Holy Land: Myth, Memory, and Imagination, detailed below.
