Derek Penslar
Derek Jonathan Penslar, is a comparative historian with interests in the relationship between modern Israel and diaspora Jewish societies, global nationalist movements, European colonialism, and post-colonial states.
He was raised in Los Angeles, attended Stanford University for his first degree, and then took his graduate degrees at the University of California at Berkeley. Penslar taught at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1987 to 1998, when he moved to Toronto to assume the Samuel J. Zacks Chair in Jewish History at the University of Toronto.
From 2012 to 2016, he was the inaugural holder of the Stanley Lewis Chair of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He was a member of the Department of Politics and International Relations and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and a fellow of St Anne's College, where he continues to be an honorary fellow. In 2016, he moved to Harvard University, where he is William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History.
In 2011, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.Books
