Research Interests: Early modern Spain; colonial Latin America; the history of the family, sexuality, and kinship; Jewish-Christian relations; the Inquisition in Spain and the Americas; Sephardi history.

Dr. Shai Zamir is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies. His research and teaching focus on the history of the early modern Iberian world with particular attention to family and kinship structures and the experiences of religious minorities.

Zamir earned his PhD in History from the University of Michigan. He also holds an MA (with distinction) in History from Tel Aviv University. Prior to joining the Hebrew University, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, and later a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the Harper Schmidt Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago.

His scholarship has appeared in Colonial Latin American Review, Journal of Early Modern History, and Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. Zamir’s current book project, Intimate Enemies and Absent Friends: Alternative Kinship in the Early Modern Iberian World (working title), examines the political and social dimensions of friendship in the Spanish Empire, particularly in the context of migration.