Strategic Innovation Lead for Jewish Heritage and Culture

Oren Margolis is a scholar of the Renaissance.  A historian of humanism, of history-writing and antiquarianism, and of the art and culture of the Renaissance book, his interests range from epigraphy to Erasmus.  His work is concerned with bridging gaps: between Italy and the north, between culture and politics, between literary, intellectual, and art history.  He is the author of The Politics of Culture in Quattrocento Europe: René of Anjou in Italy (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Aldus Manutius: The Invention of the Publisher (Reaktion, 2023), while he curated the Bodleian Library exhibition Aldus Manutius: The Struggle and the Dream (2015) on the celebrated scholar-printer of Venice. 

Prior to coming to UEA, Oren Margolis taught at Somerville College, Oxford, and was a member of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies (Austria).  He has been awarded fellowships at Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Florence) and at the British School at Rome (BSR), where he is currently a Research Fellow.  He is also in receipt of a Leverhulme International Fellowship to work in collaboration with the BSR on 'Christian Epigraphy of Rome, c. 590–1870'.

As Strategic Innovation Lead, Oren Margolis is a partner in the Jurnet's House project for a Jewish heritage and cultural centre in Norwich.  In recognition of his achievements in Jewish heritage work and community collaboration, he received the 2024 UEA Engagement Award (Arts and Culture).

Oren Margolis teaches broadly in the history of premodern Europe, including 'Life and Art in the Jewish Diaspora, c. 1300 – c. 1800' in the second year, 'The Italian Renaissance' in the third year, and Latin Palaeography for the MA programme.  He welcomes interdisciplinary work and various methodological approaches, and is happy to hear from prospective graduate students interested in medieval/early modern cultural, intellectual, and literary history, including the classical tradition, historiography, and art and book history, as well as most aspects of Italian history.

BA History and English, University of Southern California (2006)

MA Medieval History, King's College London (2007)

DPhil History, University of Oxford (2011)

Renaissance, history of the book, history of Italy, Rome, epigraphy, Jewish history and heritage