Department of History

Associate Professor

Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Office: Powdermaker Hall 352YY
Phone: 718-997-5410
Fax: 718-997-5359
Email: francesca.bregoli@qc.cuny.edu, fbregoli@gc.cuny.edu

Research Interests 

My research focuses on eighteenth-century Italian and Sephardi Jewish cultural and social history.

My first book -- "Mediterranean Enlightenment: Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform" (Stanford University Press, 2014; finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards in two categories) -- provides a fresh view on Jewish interaction with Enlightenment culture and the reforming-absolutist state by focusing on the Jews of Livorno, a thriving free port on the Mediterranean Sea.

My new project focuses on the creation and preservation of ties in transnational Jewish merchant families. 

Academic Positions

Fall 2016-present: Associate Professor of History and Joseph and Oro Halegua professor of Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies; appointed to Graduate Center doctoral faculty

Fall 2009-Summer 2016: Assistant Professor of History and Joseph and Oro Halegua professor of Greek and Sephardic Jewish Studies

Fall 2007-Summer 2009: Junior Research Fellow, Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford (UK)

Selected Fellowships and Awards

2014 National Jewish Book Award Finalist, in the categories of Sephardic Culture and Writing based on Archival Material

Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship Program, University of Pennsylvania, 2013-2014

PSC-CUNY 43 Research Award (2012-2013)

CUNY Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, Spring 2011

PSC-CUNY 41 Research Award (2010-2011)

Summer Research Workshop “Sephardic Jewry and the Holocaust”, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC, June 2010

Doctoral Fellowship, Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, 2006-2007

Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship Program, University of Pennsylvania, 2005-2006

Bernard Manekin Fellowship in the History of Jewish Art, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2000-2001

Fondazione Primo Levi (Florence) Award for an outstanding Laurea thesis in Jewish studies, 1999