Natan Sznaider is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. Sznaider has also taught and conducted research at Columbia University, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Ludwig Maximilian Universität in Munich. His theoretical and empirical research projects, conducted as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (2010, 2011, 2012, and 2022) and at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna (2003 and 2023), focus primarily on social, cultural, and political science perspectives in his analyses.

The central themes and questions of his research are cosmopolitanism, memory, anti-Semitism, sociology of knowledge, Hannah Arendt, political theory, and the Shoah.

In his research project at HIAS, Sznaider will specify his research questions allowing a discourse between moral narratives in Jewish Studies and Postcolonialism and will analyze the possibility of a new enlightenment beyond the dichotomy between universalism and particularism. In doing so, Sznaider will focus on an event that will be central to his analysis. On September 28, 1959, Hannah Arendt delivered an iconic speech before the Hamburg Parliament. The occasion was the Lessing Prize awarded to her. In the project, Sznaider will then also address this speech and the historical contexts interwoven in it using his sociological approach to knowledge: German Enlightenment of the 18th century in relation to the Jewish Question, revolutionary thought of the 19th century to the liberal and progressive critical zeitgeist of the 21st century.

His tandem partner is Birgit Recki, professor for Practical Philosophy, esp. Ethics, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture/Anthropology at Universität Hamburg

Natan Sznaider’s HIAS fellowship is provided by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and the federal and state funds acquired by Universität Hamburg in the framework of its Excellence Strategy.