Alberto Benveniste Center
The Alberto Benveniste Center was created on January 1, 2002, within the Religious Studies Section of the EPHE-PSL. It was founded by Esther Benbassa, Director of Studies, and thanks to the financial support of Serge and Monique Benveniste (Lausanne & Lisbon), who wished to honor the memory of their father, Alberto Benveniste.
The primary mission of the Alberto Benveniste Center is to develop research and encourage creativity on the Judeo-Iberian world before and after the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, in the fields of language, culture, and history. It provides appropriate scientific support to both students and established researchers. It maintains and regularly expands a documentation collection and a library now housed at the Roland-Mousnier Center, Sorbonne, Staircase G, first and a half floors. The catalog of this collection is online.
While this "Sephardic" vocation remains central, the natural evolution of the Center and the specific interests of its members have led to an expansion and diversification of its scope of intervention. For several years, Sephardic studies have been combined with studies of the sociocultural history of the Jewish world.
Since 2006, the Center has produced several collective publications, notably in the Cahiers Alberto-Benveniste collection, first published by the Paris-Sorbonne University Press (PUPS) and then by CNRS Éditions.
The Alberto-Benveniste Center is a component of the Roland-Mousnier Center Centre Roland-Mousnier, one of the oldest French historical research units, inheriting from the Center for Research on the Civilization of Modern Europe (CRCEM). Initially composed of modernist historians, it integrated, from the early 1990s, a team of contemporary historians and then, in 2008, medievalists. Two years later, it welcomed historians from the Alberto Benveniste Center.
Directeur of the Alberto-Benveniste Center: Jean-Christophe Attias
Director of CNRS Joint Research Unit 8596: Nicolas Le Roux
Unit website: https://www.centrealbertobenveniste.org/
