Call for Papers: The Materiality of Jewish-Arabic Relations

19-21 January 2026 at Ludwig Maximilians-Universität, Munich

The Unit for Judaic Studies at the Institute for the Near and Middle East (LMU, Munich) is inviting abstracts for a two-day conference funded by the Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt (BMFTR).

The concluding conference of the BMFTR-funded project Beyond Conflict and Coexistence: An Entangled History of Jewish-Arab Relations (Munich, Halle, Heidelberg 2022-2026) will centre around the materiality of Jewish-Arab relations: How does materiality mediate, shape, or challenge Jewish-Arab relations across historical and spatial contexts? How can the physicality of our source material offer new insights into shared practices, cultural transmissions, or histories of rupture?

We invite papers to explore the materiality of primary sources as critical interfaces of Jewish-Arab entanglement. Contributors are asked to focus on a primary source— a manuscript, a document, an inscription, architecture, object of everyday life, etc— to explore how materiality may help us to rethink inherited categories of conflict or coexistence of Jewish-Arab relations.

The conference aims to contribute not only to academic scholarship but also to the broader educational and public engagement objectives of the project, making the entanglements of Jewish and Arab histories accessible and communicable through materiality, across disciplinary and societal boundaries.

Presentations should be 30 minutes long and will be followed by discussion. Interested speakers should submit an abstract of 300 words and a short biography to the Teresa Bernheimer (T.Bernheimer@lmu.de) and Anna Busa (Anna.Busa@lmu.de) by 15th September 2025. We welcome submissions from established as well as junior scholars, advanced PhD students, and independent researchers. Travel and accommodation for 3 nights in Munich will be covered.

We plan to publish the results of this conference, so please let us know in advance if you are interested in contributing to the proceedings. We look forward to receiving your abstracts!