Sebastian Musch
Contemporary History
German-Jewish history in a transnational context; Jewish migration history, transfer of ideas and knowledge between Asia and Europe, Jewish-Buddhist studies
Alfred Landecker Lecturer (Research Associate) at the Chair of Modern History and Historical Migration Research and member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University
Main research interests:
Jewish studies: German-Jewish history in the 19th and 20th centuries; Jewish intellectual history and philosophy; relations between Judaism and Buddhism.
Holocaust Studies: Flight and Forced Migration in the Context of World War II; The Holocaust and the Migration Regime in the 20th Century. The Bermuda Conference 1943.
Migration research: Migration from Europe to Asia; Jewish migration history; Displaced Persons.
- 2024 (spring): Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University.
- 2022 (Hilary Term): Polonsky Fellow at the University of Oxford, co-director of the research project " Towards the Study of Jewish-Buddhist Relations" with Prof. Boaz Huss (Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva) and Prof. Lionel Obadia (University of Lyon) at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.
- 2018 (spring): Clinton Silver Fellow at the Parkes Institute for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the University of Southampton.
- From 2017 to 2021, Dr. Sebastian Musch worked on a biography of Hermann Helfgott-Zvi Asaria in a project funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung.
- In 2018 Sebastian Musch received his PhD from the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg with a dissertation on "Jewish Responses to Buddhism in German Culture, 1890-1940." The dissertation was published in 2019 under the title "Jewish Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture - Between Moses and Buddha, 1890-1940" by Palgrave Macmillan.
- 2015/16: Visiting Researcher at the Department of History, University of California, Berkeley.
- 2014-2016: Fellow of the Posen Society of Fellows.
- 2016 (summer): Visiting Fellow at the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College.
- 2016: C.H. BECK Graduate Fellowship in Literature and the Humanities at the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
- 2013/14: Visiting Scholar at the Department of Jewish History, University of Haifa, Israel.
- 2012 (summer): Visiting Lecturer at Uva Wellassa University, Badulla, Sri Lanka.
Sebastian Musch studied Jewish Studies and Philosophy at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, the University of Heidelberg and the Università degli Studi di Milano. (M.A. 2012).
Additional research and archival residencies in the United States (Exile Studies Grant, Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, University of Southern California; Center for Jewish History, New York; American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati; Library of Congress and USHMM, both Washington, D.C.. ), Great Britain (Wiener Library; London Metropolitan Archive; DAAD Summer School in German Studies, German Culture in Global Context, University of Oxford) and Israel (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; Haganah Archive, Tel Aviv; and others), China (Woodenfish Project - Humanistic Buddhism Monastic Life Program, Shengshou Temple, Zhejiang Province).