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Endowed by the late Ms Sheila (Storm) Kelly, in memory of her parents, the Israel and Ione Massada Fellowships Programme offers a unique format for fostering academic partnerships. We sponsor short, collaborative visiting fellowships that promote the values of inclusivity, diversity, and cooperation – alongside academic rigour and innovation – by facilitating interchange among all disciplines, ethnicities and religions in the State of Israel and the University of Oxford.

Please note that all upcoming public events are currently postponed due to the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The Massada Fund supports:

  • Up to five visiting academic fellowships from Israel per annum*
  • Up to three collaborative research trips per annum by Oxford fellows to Israel*
  • The Massada Annual Lecture
  • A Massada Junior Research Fellow (two-to-three-year post)
  • A Massada Programme Director

* the ratio of these activities is decided annually by the Massada Committee.

Watch the Massada Annual Lecture 2023 with David Grossman Download the 2022-23 Annual Report

Our activities

Visiting Fellowships

Collaborative research trips by Oxford fellows to Israel

The Massada Annual Lecture

Junior Research Fellowship

Massada Programme Director

Massada Committee

Programme Director & Committee

Headshot of Naomi Rokotnitz

Director of the Israel & Ione Massada Fellowships Programme

Dr Naomi Rokotnitz

Headshot of Naomi Rokotnitz

Dr Naomi Rokotnitz

Director of the Israel & Ione Massada Fellowships Programme

Education

MA (Cambridge), PhD (Bar-Ilan)

I read English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (Double First-Class Honours, 1997) and received my PhD in the same fields from Bar Ilan University in 2006 (along with the Presidential Scholarship for Excellence). As Director of The Israel and Ione Massada Fellowships Programme, I promote academic interchange between scholars here, at the University of Oxford, and scholars of all disciplines, ethnicities, religions and persuasions in the State of Israel. I am also the mother of two wonderful adults.

Provost

David Isaac

David Isaac CBE

Provost

Education

MA (Cambridge), MA (Oxford)

After attending King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny, which became a comprehensive when he was in the third form, David went on to read Law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He undertook postgraduate studies in Socio-Legal studies at Wolfson College, Oxford, before qualifying as a solicitor. He was a partner in Pinsent Masons LLP for many years, where he held a number of senior positions. During his career he specialised in advising clients on contract law matters and acted for HM Government and many other FTSE 100 and 250 companies.

Throughout his career David has also been involved in many other activities in the arts, human rights and education. He is the former Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Chair of Stonewall and Chair of Modern Art Oxford. He was also a director of the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, the Human Dignity Trust, the Big Lottery and 14-18 NOW. He is the current Chair of Governors at University of the Arts London.

David is a passionate supporter of the visual arts, as well as a keen mountain walker, swimmer, gardener, cook and beekeeper.

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Headshot of Tsilly Dagan

Professor Tsilly Dagan

Professor of Taxation Law

Professorial Fellow

Director of the MSc in Taxation

Education

LLB (Tel Aviv), LLM (NYU)

Tsilly Dagan is Professor of Taxation Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Worcester College. Professor Dagan’s main fields of research and teaching are tax law and policy (both domestic and international) and the interaction of the state and the market. Her book International Tax Policy: Between Competition and Cooperation (Cambridge University Press) is the winner of the 2017 Frans Vanistendael Award for International Tax Law. Professor Dagan studied law at Tel Aviv University (LL.B., S.J.D.) and New York University (LL.M in Taxation) and joined Bar-Ilan University where she served as Associate Dean for Research as well as Editor-in-Chief of the law review and was appointed the Raoul Wallenberg Professor of Law. Professor Dagan has taught and researched as a scholar in residence at the University of Michigan, University of Western Ontario, and Columbia University, and was a member of the Group on Global Justice at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem. She is the co-founder of the Oxford-Virginia Legal Dialogs and the International Tax Governance and Justice Workshop.

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Dr Conrad Leyser

Dr Conrad Leyser

Lightbody Fellow & Tutor in History & Student Financial Aid Officer

Clarendon Associate Professor of History

Deputy Dean of Degrees

Education

MA DPhil (Oxford)

I work on the religious and social history of western Europe and North Africa, from the fall of Rome to the rise of Latin Christendom after the first millennium. I have studied the problem of moral authority in the post-Roman West. My current project traces the relationship between institutional identity and cultural memory across the late ancient and early medieval period.  In a study entitled The Myth of the Church, I plan to follow the development–slow and late–of a professional, celibate clerical hierarchy.

My immediate interests are in proposing a new view of the tenth-century Church. I am testing the hypothesis that this was an era in which bishops took advantage of the confusion occasioned by the end of the Carolingian Empire to achieve an unprecedented degree of institutional autonomy and self-definition. By marshalling (and sometimes actively forging) the authority of the early Church, late ninth- and tenth-century clerics succeeded in making of the episcopacy a career, with its own code of conduct, and the possibility of advancement.

Read the 2022-23 Annual Report

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