PD Dr. Andreas Brämer (IGdJ, project leader)
Andreas Brämer is deputy director at the IGdJ. He studied at the
University of Jewish Studies Heidelberg and at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. He received his doctorate in Jewish Studies from the Free University
of Berlin – with a dissertation on Rabbi Zacharias Frankel. Before Andreas
Brämer transferred to the Institute for the History of the German Jews in 1997,
he worked as an academic staff member at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien and
at the Gesamthochschule Duisburg. Since his habilitation in 2006, he has also
taught as a private lecturer (adjunct professor) in the Department of History at
the University of Hamburg. Andreas Brämer is a member of the board of the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft of
the Leo Baeck Institute and chairman of the Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der Geschichte der
Juden e. V. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Maimonides Centre for
Advanced Studies – Jewish Scepticism at the University of Hamburg and
a member of the advisory board of the Leo Baeck Institute
Yearbook.
PD Dr.-Ing. habil. Ulrich Knufinke (Bet Tfila – Research Unit,
project leader)
Ulrich Knufinke is a research associate at the Lower Saxony State Office
for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, where his responsibilities in the
department for the preservation of historical buildings and art include the
coordination of research projects. He studied architecture and German language
and literature at the Technical University of Braunschweig, where he received
his doctorate in 2005. In 2014, he completed his habilitation at the University
of Stuttgart. In addition to his work at the NLD, Knufinke currently teaches as
a private lecturer at the TU Braunschweig, where he is the scientific director
of the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for
Jewish Architecture in Europe.
Dr. Sonja Dickow-Rotter (IGdJ, project staff)
Sonja Dickow-Rotter is an academic staff member at the IGdJ since 2019 and
initially a project staff member of the digital source edition Key Documents of German-Jewish
History. In this context, she also conceptualized and implemented
online exhibitions as well as other digital formats. Sonja Dickow-Rotter studied
literature and cultural anthropology at the University of Hamburg. After
receiving her master’s degree, she worked as an academic staff member at the
Walter A. Berendsohn Research Center for Exile Literature. Sonja Dickow-Rotter
wrote her doctoral dissertation on literary configurations of house and home in
contemporary Jewish literatures. Her comparative dissertation, which was awarded
the University of Hamburg's Joseph Carlebach Prize in 2021, was written at the
University of Hamburg and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Sonja
Dickow-Rotter is an alumna of the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund.
Dipl.- Ing. Mirko Przystawik (Bet Tfila – Research Unit,
project staff)
Mirko Przystawik studied architecture at the Technische Universität
Braunschweig and has been working as architectural historian since 2005: First,
he served as a research associate at the Institute for the History of
Architecture and Urban Development, Department of Architectural History, and
since 2007 at the Bet Tfila – Research Unit there. Parallel to this, he assumed
his work at the IGdJ as an academic staff member in 2019. In various projects,
he has addressed his research focus – modern Jewish architecture and material
culture as well as Jewish topography, for example in the project “Jüdische Reform und Architektur: Die ‘Erfindung’ der
Reformsynagoge im heutigen Land Niedersachsen und ihre weltweite Verbreitung
im 19. Jahrhundert” (Jewish Reform and Architecture: The ‘Invention’ of
the Reform Synagogue in the Present-Day State of Lower Saxony and its Worldwide
Dissemination in the Nineteenth Century), 2009–2012, Bet Tfila – Research Unit
and IGdJ. His current project at Bet Tfila – Research Unit is titled “Niedersachsen – Eine jüdische Topographie” (Lower Saxony –
A Jewish Topography). In previous projects, he did research on the Jewish rural
community in Hornburg and Torah arks in German-speaking regions.