Elisheva Baumgarten is the Yitzchak Becker Professor of Jewish Studies in the Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry Department and the History Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Baumgarten completed her studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (B.A., magna cum laude, 1993; M.A., summa cum laude, 1995;  Ph.D, summa cum laude, 2001) and spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania (1999-2001) before returning to Israel. She joined The Hebrew University in 2013 after teaching in the Department of Jewish History and the Gender Studies Program at Bar Ilan University for 12 years (Lecturer, 2002; tenured Senior Lecturer, 2008). She studies the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1400), and her research focuses on the social history of the Jewish communities living in the urban centers of medieval Europe and especially on daily contacts between Jews and Christians. It seeks to include those who did not write the sources that have reached us, with a special interest in women and gender hierarchies.

Baumgarten has received awards and fellowships from the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, EHESS, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Yad Hanadiv Rothschild Foundation and her publications have received several prizes. She has received research grants from the Israel Science Foundation, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German-Israel Foundation and the European Research Council.