Associate Professor Ziva Shavitsky

Principal Academic Fellow

Contact details:
Email: ziva@ unimelb.edu.au

Profile and Research Interests:

Associate Professor Shavitsky has three degrees from the University of Melbourne. A native speaker, she has taught Modern Hebrew language and literature, awarded the inaugural Sylvia Gelman Award in recognition of outstanding contribution in the area of Jewish Education in Victoria. Ziva is involved in many aspects of Hebrew culture in the local community. She is a past President pf the Australian Association for Jewish Studies, and editor of The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies.

Her interests cover all Hebrew and Jewish literature, from Biblical to contemporary texts, and second language acquisition. She has co-written a lexicon from the exegesis of Abraham Ibn Ezra, a 12th century commentator, and is at present, completing a book on The People of Israel in Exile in Syria Mesopotamia up to ca. 300BC, and another book on The Representation of German Jewry in Twentieth Century Hebrew Literature.

Ziva has recently completed four chapters on Hebrew writers and poets to be published in a two volume edition due in 2007/8. She has also published articles in academic journals on Biblical topics, German Jewry, as well as book reviews. This includes chapters in the Holocaust Literature Encyclopaedia of Routledge Press; The People of Israel in Exile: Contacts with Aram (Syria) from the time of Kind David to the Fall of Damascus 732 BCE (Australian Journal of Jewish Studies XVII [2003]). Earlier publications include: Muraoka, T. and Shavitsky, Z. - Abraham Ibn Ezra's Biblical Hebrew Lexicon; in Abr-Nahrain on The Five; Megilloth, the Minor Prophets and The Book of Daniel (1987-1993).