Dr. Jessica van 't Westeinde

‘Grounds for combat or conciliation: ecumenical councils between Nicaea and Chalcedon’, subproject of Project 9: Councils and Conflicts. Trouble Shooting and Shooting Trouble in Late Antiquity (PIs Stefan Rebenich and Katharina Heyden), IFK Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies

Jews and the City: A History of Jewish Urban Life in the (later) Roman Empire (independent research project conducted at the universities of Aarhus and Tuebingen (2 appointments)) 

Perception of Landscape and Sanctuaries in Hellenistic Literature (Polybius), at SFB 1266 TP E3 (PI Annette Haug), Institut für klassische Archäologie, University of Kiel

Jerome of Stridon: social networks, relations with Roman aristocrats (PhD project; supervisors Lewis Ayres and Carol Harrison), various approaches that mostly focus on socio-economic history since (everlasting ongoing research)

2017
PhD in History of Religion, St Chad’s College, University of Durham

2012
MA in Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven

2011
BA in Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven

Since April 2023
Research Fellow

2018- 2022                             
Junior Research Fellow, IFK Religious Conflicts and Coping Strategies, University of Bern, Switzerland

2018- 2020 
Excellence Junior Research Fellow, Department of Ancient History, University of Tuebingen, Germany

2017-2018                              
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, SFB 1266 TP E3, Institut für klassische Archäologie, University of Kiel, Germany

2016-2017                              
Lecturer, Lehrstuhl für Neues Testament I, Evangelisch-Theologische Fakultät, University of Tuebingen, Germany

2016-2017                              
Teach @ Tuebingen Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institut ür antikes Judentum und hellenistische Religionsgeschichte, University of Tuebingen, Germany

Feb-Jul 2016                           
Visiting Research Fellow, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Denmark

2013-2015                              
Teaching Assistant, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, UK

2012-2014                              
Research Assistant, Department of Theology and Religion, University of Durham, UK

SNF Scientific Exchanges Grant 2021 Project: Conflict Management: Networking Emperors and Bishops in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries CE, Grant: 9,500 CHF

Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst (DAAD) Conference Grant 2019, Grant: circa 2,500 Euros, Project: SBL Annual Meeting San Diego 2019

Recruitment Initiative for Excellent Junior Researchers 2018-2020, Institutional Strategy of the University of Tübingen ZUK63, Project: Jewish sacred spaces in Roman cities, Host: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner

Bridge Fund Zukunftskonzept Exzellenzinitiative Tübingen (declined) 2017

Isaiah Berlin Scholarship 2017

Teach @ Tübingen Excellence Postdoctoral Research Fellowship 2016-2017, Project: Jewish Diaspora Identity after Bar Kokhba. Host: Prof. Dr. Michael Tilly

International Society for Religion, Literature, and Culture Early Career Researcher Support Grant, Glasgow University (UK) 2016

AUFF Visiting Fellowship, Aarhus University (Denmark) 2016, Project: Jewish and Christian ideas of Diaspora identities and communities in Rome in the context of shifting roles of religion in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba war. Host: Prof. Dr. Anders Klostergaard Petersen. Grant: 30,000 DKK

Durham University Postgraduate Research Award

Initialisierungsstipendium, University of Erfurt (Germany) (declined) , Max-Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies Host: Prof. Dr. Markus Vinzent. Grant: circa 6,000 Euros

Department of Theology and Religion Conference Grant St Chad’s College Conference Award

Department of Theology and Religion Conference Grant

Editorial Board Encounters between Judaism and Christianity, Brill-Schoeningh

Steering Committee ‘Religious Competition in Late Antiquity’ (SBL)

European Association for Jewish Studies

North American Patristics Society

Society of Biblical Literature

American Academy of Religion

Monographs

van ‘t Westeinde, J., (2021): Roman Nobilitas in Jerome’s Letters. Roman Values and Christian Asceticism for Socialites (STAC, 127), Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck

-. (2023), Spaced-Out Bishops. Manifestations of Spatial Agency at the Ecumenical Councils of the Fifth Century (manuscript to be submitted)

Edited journals and volumes

van ‘t Westeinde, J., Cain, A., Kraus, M. eds. (2022), New Paradigms in the Study of Jerome, Studia Patristica, Leuven: Peeters (under review)

van ‘t Westeinde, J. (et al.), Jews and the City. Shared Urban Spatiality in Late Antique Judaism, thematic journal issue, planned for 2022 (in preparation)

Articles and Chapters (peer-reviewed)

-., (2023): Rendering Visible the Invisible: Servants and Slave-Girls in Late Antique Christianity’, in M. Kahlos and E. Fournier (eds.), Women and Gender in the Post-Roman Kingdoms (CELAMA), Turnhout: Brepols (in preparation)

-., (2023): Publish or Perish: Jerome’s Authorial Distributions in ‘Exile’, in S. Niskanen and V. Rovere (eds.), Authorial Publication from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia), Turnhout: Brepols (in preparation)

-., (2023): The Creation of Pelagianism: Jerome, in A. Dupont, G. Malavasi, B. Matz (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Pelagian Controversy, Oxford: Oxford University Press (submitted)

-., (2023): Jerome on Biblical Sites and Sightseeing, in O. Schaaf and B. Feichtinger (eds.), Hieronymus und die Bibel: Schrifte – Texte - Kontexte, Berlin: De Gruyter (submitted)

-., (2023). ‘The money in monastery: toward an analysis of the competition between Jerome’s and Rufinus’ monasteries from an economic perspective’, Journal of Religious Competition in Late Antiquity, (in preparation)

-. (2023), “Johannes Munck”, Biographisch-Bibliographisch Kirchenlexikon, Verlag Bautz Nordhausen (in preparation)

-., (2022): Miles Make the Mind. Jerome on Travel, Learning, and Knowledge Exchange, in E. Mataix Ferrándiz and A. Usacheva (eds.), Mediterranean Flows: People, Ideas, and Objects in Motion, CAMA, Leiden: Brill, 180-210

-., (2022): Religious Minorities in Late Roman Italy: Jewish city-dwellers and their non-Jewish neighbours, in J.W.P. Wijnendaele (ed.), Late Roman Italy – Imperium to Regnum (c. 250-500 CE), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (in press)

-. (2021): “...the sails were set and the strokes of the rowers carried the vessel into the deep (Ep. 108.6). A preliminary study of travel and perception in Jerome’s writings,” in NTT Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion 75 (2), 251-273

-., (2021): Creating an archive of the past to claim history. A case study of the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431 CE), in K. Heyden and A. Brändli (eds.), Claiming History. The Role of Historical Reasoning in Religious Conflicts (Bibliotheca Helvetica, 39), Basel: Schwabe, 87-109

-. (2021): Sacerdotalisation and early Jewish mystical elements in the Greek Testament of Levi, in: Les écrits mystiques des Hekhalot et la ‘sacerdotalisation’ dans le judaïsme ancient, Colloque international à l’Université de Lausanne du 26 au 28 octobre 2015, (Judaïsme antique et origines du christianisme, 22 ), Eds. D. Hamidovic, S. C. Mimouni, and L. Painchaud, Turnhout: Brepols, 217- 246

-., (2020): Urban sacred spaces: interaction in the neighbourhoods of Roman Dura Europos, in RRE 6, 181-205

. -. (2020): Roman Awe for Hellenistic Sanctuaries, in A. Müller and A. Haug (eds), Hellenistic Architecture and Human Action, Leiden: Sidestone Press, 151-165

-. (2019): Liberating Levi: a cultural evolutionary approach to Aramaic and Greek Levi beyond denominational essentialism, in We and They. Decolonizing Greco-Roman and Biblical Antiquities

-. (2018): Not that far from a madding crowd: Jerome ‘exiled’ in Bethlehem, in Mobility and Exile at the End of Antiquity (ECCA), Eds. J. Ulrich, D. Rohmann, J. Hillner, M. Vallejo Girvés, Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 229-245

-. (2017): Jerome and the Christianus perfectus: a transformed Roman noble man? in Studia Patristica 97, 17-36

-. (2016): Teach and Transform: education and (re)constructing identity in Jerome’s letters, in: Studia Patristica 74, 223-237

-. (2016): Questioning Authority: Christian education leading to lay participation in doctrinal debates, in: Tradition and Transformation. Dissent and Consent in the Mediterranean, Ed. M. Mitrea, Kiel: Solivagus, 92-114

Authorial Publication in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Helsinki (F) 15-16 June 2023 (by invitation): Publish or Perish: Jerome’s Authorial Distribution in ‘Exile’

SBL – Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism, Denver (US) 19-22 November 2022: Euergetism and Building Christian Communities: A Legal Perspective

Oxford Conference Literary Production, Jesus College, Oxford (UK) 10-12 July 2022 (by invitation): Publish or perish: how Jerome activated his network to disseminate his writings after his exile from Rome

International Medieval Congress, Leeds (UK), Session: Women and Gender in the Post-Roman Successor States (Fournier & Kahlos) (by invitation): Rendering visible the invisible: servants and slave-girls in Jerome’s letters

Nils Klimt Laureate Panel (by invitation), Bergen (Norway), Holberg Prize Week; Panel Theme: Women’s Mobility in Antiquity: Forced Mobility of Servants and Slave-Girls
NAPS, Chicago (USA): Ephesus 431 CE and the Rhetoric of Urbanity

SBL – Religious Competition in Late Antiquity, San Antonio (USA): The money in monastery: toward an analysis of the competition between Jerome’s and Rufinus’ monasteries from an economic perspective

Hieronymus und die Bibel, Universität Konstanz (D) 2-3 December 2021 (by invitation): Jerome on Biblical Sites and Sightseeing

Conflict management: networking emperors and bishops, Bern (CH) 21-22 September 2020 (conference organiser): Managing (mis)behaviour: two case studies from Ephesus 431 CE and Chalcedon 451 CE

Guides to Urbanity, Max-Weber Kolleg, Erfurt (D) 10-11 June 2020: Controlling (religious) misbehaviour in an urban context: re-reading the communications and regulations of the Second Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431 CE) in light of an urban religion approach

NAPS, Chicago (USA) 21-23 May 2020 ‘To cope, or not to cope?’ Detecting coping strategies in the reception of the ‘Robber Synod’ at the First Meeting of Chalcedon 451 CE

SBL – Religious Competition in Late Antiquity San Diego (USA): Councils, competition, and conflict: spatial agency and the Sitz-im-Raum of Ephesus 431

Workshop Project 1 Epistemology (IFK), (by invitation) Bern (CH) 7 May 2019: Supersessionist strategies of ‘othering’? Out-grouping Judaizers at the ecumenical councils from Nicaea 325 CE to Constantinople 381 CE

Oxford Patristics: Symposium Shifting Paradigms in the Study of Jerome 19-24 August 2019: Oxford (UK) (symposium organiser): Mapping Jerome’s noble network. Social interaction and connectivity beyond controversy?

AAR Annual Meeting, Denver (US) 17-21 November 2018 Hosting & participation panel: Semper ciceronianus? Jerome entangled in the classical world

BAJS 2018, University of Durham (UK) 9-11 July 2018 (panel organiser): The city shaping its Jews: archaeology and history of cross-cultural and interreligious influences on urban Jewish groups in Antiquity; talk: The city scape and scattered sacred space: Diversification of Jewish group identity in Roman Dura-Europos

Religion of Quarters, Max-Weber-Kolleg Erfurt, Eisenach (D) 4-6 July 2018: Urban sacred spaces: interaction in the neighbourhoods of Roman Dura-Europos

EASR Bern, University of Bern (CH) 17-21 June 2018: Conflicts, councils, and coping: religious conflict as socio-spatial feature of urban space

Urban Religion Spring School, Danish Institute Rome (I) 12-16 March 2018: The city scape and scattered sanctuaries: perception of and in Jewish burial sites. The catacombs of Vigna Randanini as a window to Jewish groups in late antique Rome

Klassische Archäologie Workshop, CAU, Kiel (D): Landscape Perception in Polybius