Dr. Nick Posegay

PhD in Middle Eastern Studies (2021), Gates Cambridge Scholar, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge (supervisor: Geoffrey Khan)

MA in Middle Eastern Studies (2017), FLAS Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago (supervisor: Fred Donner)

BA with Honors in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations/Religious Studies (2016), Minor in History, Phi Beta Kappa Society Honors (2015), University of Chicago

Books

Posegay, Nick and Melonie Schmierer-Lee. 2024. The Illustrated Cairo Genizah. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press.

Posegay, Nick, Magdalen M. Connolly, and Ben Outhwaite (eds). 2024. From the Battlefield of Books: Essays Celebrating 50 Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, 16. Leiden: Brill.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. Points of Contact: The Shared Intellectual History of Vocalisation in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 10. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

• Winner of the 2022 BIAJS Annual Book Prize for best monograph in Jewish Studies

Journal Articles

Posegay, Nick. 2025. “The Arabo-Tiberian Vocalisation System: An Undocumented Set of Medieval Vowel Signs for the Hebrew Script.” Folia Orientalia 62, 31-49.

Posegay, Nick and Orietta Da Rold. 2024. “Following the Mediterranean Paper Trail: A Study of European Paper in Late Medieval Cairo (ca. 1350-1600).” The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 25.4, 430-452.

Posegay, Nick. 2024. “Five Qurʾanic Papyri from the Michaelides Collection at the Cambridge University Library.” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies, 26.1, 101-124.

Posegay, Nick. 2024. “An Early Arabic Translation of Exodus 15 from a Palestinian Melkite Psalter in the Cairo Genizah.” Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 21, 97-120.

Posegay, Nick. 2022. “Searching for the Last Genizah Fragment in Late Ottoman Cairo: A Material Survey of Egyptian Jewish Literary Culture.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 423-441.

Connolly, Magdalen M. and Nick Posegay. 2021. “A Survey of Personal-Use Qurʾan Manuscripts Based on Fragments from the Cairo Genizah.” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 23.2, 1-40.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “The Marking of Poetry: A Rare Vocalization System from an Early Qurʾān Manuscript in Chicago, Paris, and Doha.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 80.1, 73-89.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “To Belabour the Points: Encoding Vowel Phonology in Syriac and Hebrew Vocalization.” Journal of Semitic Studies LXVI (1), 53-76.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “Men of Letters in the Syriac Scribal Tradition: Dawid bar Pawlos, Rabban Rāmišoʿ, and the Family of Beṯ Rabban.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 24.1, 127-186.

Posegay, Nick and Estara J Arrant. 2021. “Three Fragments of a Judaeo-Arabic Translation of Ecclesiastes with Full Tiberian Vocalisation.” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 9.3, 259-296.

Connolly, Magdalen M. and Nick Posegay. 2020. “‘An Arabic Qurʾān, that you might understand’: Qurʾān Fragments in the T-S Arabic Cairo Genizah Collection.” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 11 (3), 292-351.

Posegay, Nick. 2020. “A Judaeo-Arabic Biblical Glossary as a Source for Arabic Historical Dialectology.” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 20, 33-52.

Book Chapters

Posegay, Nick. 2025. “A Jewish Translation of Genesis in 10th-Century Egyptian Arabic.” The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East, eds. Alba Fedeli, Geoffrey Khan, and Johan Lundberg. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 40. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 275-305.

Posegay, Nick. 2025. “Some Notes on Melody: Saʿadya Gaon and Why ‘Naghma’ Means ‘Vowel’ in Judaeo-Arabic.” Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan, Volume 2, eds. A. ​Hornkohl, N. Vidro, J.C.E. Watson, E. Coghill, M.M. Connolly, and B. Outhwaite. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 35. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 311-340.

Posegay, Nick. 2024. “Ernest James Worman and the Victorian Genizah: A Salt-Miner’s Tale of Romance, Tax Evasion, and Sudden Death.” From the Battlefield of Books: Essays Celebrating 50 Years of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, eds. Nick Posegay, Magdalen M. Connolly, and Ben Outhwaite. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, 16. Leiden: Brill, 239–258.

Posegay, Nick. 2024. “Eleven Colophons by Ten Printers from Seven Cities in the Cairo Genizah.” Literary Snippets: A Colophon Reader, eds. George A. Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 25-37.

Posegay, Nick. 2023. “Hebrew Printing and Printers’ Colophons in the Cairo Genizah: Networking Book Trade in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.” Literary Snippets: Colophons Across Space and Time, eds. George A. Kiraz and Sabine Schmidtke. Gorgias Handbooks, 64. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 79-105.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “Hissing, Gnashing, Piercing, Cracking: Naming Vowels in Medieval Hebrew.” New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew, eds. Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 7. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 29-55.

Posegay, Nick. 2020. “Connecting the Dots: The Shared Phonological Tradition in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Vocalisation.” Studies in Semitic Vocalisation and Reading Traditions, eds. Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures, 3. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 191-226.

Notes

Posegay, Nick. 2024. “Illuminating an Illuminated Islamic Document: The Twin Arts of Calligraphy and Embroidery in Fatimid Egypt (T-S K10.12).” Fragment of the Month (August). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick. 2023. “The Long Road to Samarqand: Reverse-Engineering the Travels of a 12th-Century Andalusi Muslim (T-S Ar.53.39).” Fragment of the Month (October). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick. 2023. “Solving European Writer’s Block in Jewish Cairo (T-S 20.188).” Fragment of the Month (January). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “New Discoveries: T-S NS 297.132.” Genizah Fragments, 80. Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick. 2021. “Jewish Parchment, Muslim Prayer: Uncovering an Early Abbasid Palimpsest (T-S Ar.51.73).” Fragment of the Month (June). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick. 2020. “Following the Links in T-S NS 192.11: A Qurʾanic Exercise from a Cairene Public School.” Fragment of the Month (January). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

Posegay, Nick.  2019. “Reciting Hebrew with an Arabic Accent: A Partial List of Ṭeʿamim from T-S K9.11.” Fragment of the Month (July). Cambridge: University Library Genizah Research Unit.

2025 – 2027 Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow, “Constantinople 1546: A Crossroads of Hebrew and Arabic Culture,” Faculty of Philology, Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Ruhr University Bochum

2021 – 2024 Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, “Interfaith Exchange in the Intellectual History of Middle Eastern Languages,” Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

2022 – 2024 Lead Editor, Genizah Research Unit 50th Anniversary Project, Cambridge University Library

2021 – 2022 Postdoctoral Research Associate, European Research Council Consolidator Grant, “The Transformation of Jewish Literature in Arabic in the Islamicate World,” Institute for the Near and Middle East, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich

2021 – 2022 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe Grant, “Poetry and Documents in the Cairo Genizah,” Cambridge University Library

2021 Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Research & Collections Programme, “Thinking Paper,” Cambridge University Library/Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

2019 – 2020 Supervisor for Year-2 Arabic, Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge

2019 – 2020 Supervisor for Year-1 Arabic, Newnham College, University of Cambridge

Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship (2025-2027), Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung

Afro-Eurasian Histories of Print Global Seminar Fellowship (2024-2025), Research & Academic Program, Clark Art Institute

BIAJS Annual Book Prize (2022) for best monograph in Jewish Studies, British & Irish Association for Jewish Studies

Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2021-2024), Leverhulme Trust/Isaac Newton Trust, University of Cambridge

Gates Cambridge Scholarship (2017-2021), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, University of Cambridge

Critical Language Scholarship Alumni Development Grant (2016-2017), American Councils for International Education, University of Chicago

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (Arabic) (2016-2017), United States Department of Education, University of Chicago

Foreign Language Acquisition Grant (2016), University of Chicago, Jordan Language Academy

Critical Language Scholarship (2016), American Councils for International Education, Arab American Language Institute in Morocco

National Guild of St. Margaret of Scotland Award (2016) for best thesis in Medieval Studies, University of Chicago

Justin Palmer Prize (2016) for best thesis in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society (2015), University of Chicago

Endowed Odyssey Scholarship (2013-2016), University of Chicago

National Merit Scholarship (2012), United States National Merit Program

National Multiple Sclerosis Society Scholarship (2012), United States National MS Society

_{Invited Lectures}

19 May 2026 “Fragmentary Philology: What to do when you don’t have much to do.” Institute  for Arabic & Islamic Studies Research Colloquium, Faculty of Philology, Ruhr University Bochum

30 May 2025 “The Missing Links of Global Print: Islamic Paper and Jewish Printing at the Intersection of Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire.” Afro-Eurasian Histories of Print Global Seminar: Part II, Seoul National University, South Korea

5 March 2025 “A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo as a Source for Arabic and Islamic Studies.” Gotha Manuscript Talks. Gotha Research Library, University of Erfurt, Germany

12 Nov. 2024 “The Illustrated Cairo Genizah” (with Melonie Schmierer-Lee). Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge, England

29 May 2024 “50 Years of the Genizah Research Unit” (with Ben Outhwaite and Rebecca J.W. Jefferson). Association of Jewish Libraries, Library of Congress, United States

6 May 2024 “Reciting in Clear Arabic Speech: Reconstruction of Dialectal Phonology from Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Targum Traditions.” Middle Eastern Linguistics and Philology Seminar, University of Cambridge, England

31 Jan. 2024 “Virtual Visit to the Cairo Genizah: Hebrew Printing Culture in Jewish Egypt” (with Ben Outhwaite). The Bibliographical Society Lecture Programme, Institute of English Studies, University of London, England

13 March 2023 “Material and Linguistic History of Arabic Manuscripts in Muslim and Jewish Contexts.” Oxford Interfaith Forum, University of Oxford, England

9 Nov. 2021 “Qurʾan Fragments in the Cairo Genizah Collections” (with Magdalen M. Connolly). Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

1 July 2019 “The Development of Vowel Names in Medieval Hebrew.” Cambridge Hebrew Ulpan Guest Lecture, University of Cambridge, England

_{Conferences and Symposia}

16 Nov. 2024 “Transcription Techniques for Arabic Dialects in Abbasid-Era Jewish Bible Translations.” Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities Conference: Translation and Multilingualism in the Premodern Islamic World(s), Institute of Islamic Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

6 Oct. 2023 “Francis Jenkinson and the Cairo Genizah Collection.” The Legacy of Francis Jenkinson Symposium, Cambridge University Library, England

20 June 2023 “Ernest Worman and the Victorian Genizah: A Librarian’s Tale of Romance, Tax Evasion, and Sudden Death.” Association of Jewish Libraries Annual Conference (June 19-22), United States

27 March 2023 “By Divination, By Tradition, or By Means of Much Toil: How Tech Transcends Sect in Medieval Language Transmission.” Cambridge Interfaith Programme: Language Learning In/As Religious Education, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, England

17 Nov. 2022 “Jewish Engagement with the Qurʾan in Medieval Cairo.” Building Bridges Symposium, Al-Maktoum College, Dundee, Scotland

6 Sep. 2022 “Qurʾan Fragments in Cairo Genizah Collections” (with Magdalen M. Connolly). International Qurʾanic Studies Association Annual Meeting (September 5-7), Giorgio La Pira Library and Research Centre, Palermo, Italy

19 May 2022 “Watermarks and Water Damage: What an Egyptian Archive Can Tell Us About European Paper.” Thinking Paper: Legacies of Paper in the Archives, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, England

21 Nov. 2021 “Comparative Semitic Linguistics in Masoretic Thought: The Case of the Hebrew Vowel Scale.” Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting (November 20-23), San Antonio, United States

6 Aug. 2019 “Connecting the Dots: The Shared Phonological Tradition Behind Hebrew and Syriac Vocalisation.” International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament (August 4-9), University of Aberdeen, Scotland

8 July 2019 “The Voices of Kings: Names for Vowels in Medieval Hebrew Linguistics.” Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew Conference: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics (July 8-10), University of Cambridge, England

26 Feb. 2019 “Common Tongues, Common Problems: Linguistic Exchange in the Medieval Middle East.” Gates Cambridge Symposium, University of Cambridge, England

4 May 2018 “The Shared Phonological Tradition in Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Vocalisation.” FAMES Vocalisation Workshop, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, England

2024 – 2025 Research Affiliate, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library

2024 Syriac Language & Manuscripts Special Exhibition Consultant, “Endless Stories: Manuscripts, Knowledge and Translation in the 17th Century,” Cambridge University Library

2023 – 2024 Postdoctoral Representative, Research Strategy Working Group, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Cambridge

2022 – 2024 Research Affiliate, Cambridge Interfaith Forum, Cambridge Faculty of Divinity

2021 – 2023 Social Media Manager, Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library

2023 Special Collections Evaluation Consultant (Middle Eastern Collections), Brotherton Library, University of Leeds

2019 – 2020 Volunteer Research Assistant, Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library

2018 – 2019 Conference Organiser/Treasurer, Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics (July 8-10, 2019), University of Cambridge

2015 – 2017 Founder, Editor-in-Chief, Chicago Majalla, an Arabic-language magazine at the University of Chicago

2013 – 2017 Museum Guide, Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC), University of Chicago

Arabic (Classical, Middle, Modern Standard, Judaeo, Garshuni)
Aramaic (Biblical, Middle Jewish)
French (Modern)
German (Modern)
Hebrew (Biblical, Medieval, Modern)
Spanish (Modern Castilian, Judaeo/Ladino)
Syriac (East, West)