Ilil Baum is a cultural historian, focusing on the interplay of language and identity among the Jews of Iberia; and on the emergence of Sephardic identity after 1492 in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb, in comparison to similar phenomena among Spanish Muslims and Moriscos. She earned her PhD from the Hebrew University (2018). Her research of the pre-modern Mediterranean combines cultural and intellectual history with philological and linguistic tools. She is currently completing her monograph on Language and Identity among the Jews of Christian Spain (13th-15th centuries). Her research at the HCMH is dedicated to a comparative study of language practices among Muslims, Moriscos and Jews in Christian Spain and in their early-modern diasporas outside of Iberia, portraying the ongoing contact between Arabo-Andalusian traditions and Ibero-Hispanic culture in the early modern Mediterranean.

Post-Doctoral Fellow (2023-4), The Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HUJI)