Our alumni

Amir Perez is a doctoral candidate in the Comparative Literature program at Tel Aviv University. 

His research focuses on the concept of "World Literature"; (Weltliteratur, littérature mondiale)—how a literary work or tradition transcends boundaries of language and culture, place and time, to achieve "worldly" status—from a critical postcolonial perspective: what is the place of literary works and traditions from the Global South and East within the realm of
world literature?

The research explores these questions through the case study of the "topos"—or literary image—of the city of Oran in northern Algeria. By comparing writings about the city by Arab and Amazigh, French and Jewish authors, the research argues that the literary field formed around Oran serves as a measure for world literature in the postcolonial era—a time when cultural and political hierarchies are shifting amidst the dynamic interplay of place, language, culture, and community that continues to unfold between France, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Thanks to the Chateaubriand Fellowship, Amir was hosted at La Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris,
where he met and collaborated with leading researchers of Algerian literature; with their
assistance, he was able to deepen his research and forge both professional and personal
connections.

Neta Peretz is an art historian and researcher who holds a PhD in Art History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on representations of Jewish women in nineteenth-century French visual culture, particularly the ways in which gender, religion, ethnicity, and social identity intersected in portraiture, caricature, and popular imagery. Her work examines subjects including the belle juive stereotype, Orientalism, and gendered antisemitism. Thanks to the Chateaubriand Fellowship, Neta conducted research at the Centre Roland Mousnier (CNRS) in Paris, where she benefited from access to French archives, libraries, museum collections, and academic expertise. This research contributed directly to her current monograph, Beyond the Belle Juive: Jewish Female Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Visual Culture. Her time in France enabled her to expand the project’s visual and archival sources and deepen its engagement with French cultural and social history. By bringing together art history, Jewish studies, and gender history, her work seeks to provide a more nuanced understanding of the representation and lived experiences of Jewish women in nineteenth-century France.

Sergey Hazanov is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where his research focuses on superconducting qubits for quantum computing. His work aims to make these qubits more robust, a key step toward building reliable quantum computers. Supported by the Chateaubriand Fellowship, Sergey spent eight months in the Quantum Circuits Group at ENS Lyon, under the supervision of Prof. Benjamin Huard, in collaboration with Alice & Bob, a French quantum-computing startup. There he helped develop a new generation of a promising qubit design that is inherently more resilient to noise, contributing to its circuit design, simulations, and first measurements. This experience greatly advanced his doctoral research and strengthened the scientific ties between his lab at the Weizmann Institute and the French quantum-computing community.

Shira Gottlieb is a Lecturer and Course Coordinator in the Department of Literature, Language and Arts at the Open University of Israel. Her research examines the representation of older women in nineteenth-century French visual culture. As a recipient of the Chateaubriand Fellowship, she spent six months as a visiting researcher at the Centre de ressources et de recherche Daniel Marchesseau at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. There, she conducted archival research in the museum’s library and worked extensively with primary sources from the museum’s collections for her forthcoming monograph. During her residency, she collaborated with the museum’s curators on the forthcoming exhibition Histoires de familles (March 2027), participated in a related seminar series at the École du Louvre, and delivered a lecture on her research. An interview about her work is available on the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie blog, Le Carnet de recherche.

Shani Pocker is a PhD candidate in the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on medieval Hebrew literature, particularly poetic epistles written in Muslim Spain and the broader Arabic-speaking world. By examining the relationship between poetry and letter writing from a performative perspective, she explores how literary texts functioned as acts of communication and social interaction. More broadly, her work investigates the connections between literary form, rhetoric, and material textual practices, while also tracing continuities between medieval and modern Hebrew literature. As a Chateaubriand Fellow, Shani was hosted by INALCO in Paris, where she developed her doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Alessandro Guetta. Her stay enabled her to deepen the theoretical framework of her project, engage with the vibrant community of medieval Hebrew and Jewish studies in France, and establish lasting academic connections that continue beyond the fellowship.
 

Ezra is a lecturer at Afeka College of Engineering in Tel Aviv. His field of research is analytic number theory, and his main research interest concerns the statistical distribution of prime numbers as well as their analogues over function fields. Although his work is rooted in pure mathematics, his research interests also naturally intersect with several areas of application, including quantum cryptography and linear feedback shift registers. As part of a Chateaubriand Fellowship, he spent six months in Calais, France, working with Dr. Lucile Devin on a project related to the low-lying zeros across families of L-functions. He also gave several academic talks at conferences and seminars throughout France and across Europe.

Omri Amiraz received his PhD in Linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, specializing in formal semantics, linguistic typology, and historical linguistics. As a Chateaubriand Fellow, he spent three months at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris, working with Prof. Benjamin Spector on the semantics of quantification and part–whole structure. Their collaboration resulted in a journal publication and also opened new research directions on semantic universals, which remain a central focus of his research. The fellowship provided an invaluable opportunity to exchange ideas with researchers at the Institut Jean Nicod and to establish long-term international collaborations.