About us

Southampton's links with Jewish Studies go back to the beginning of the last century when Claude Montefiore, an outstanding Jewish scholar of the Bible and early Jewish-Christian relations, became president of the University College of Southampton (1913-1934), which was later to become the University of Southampton. Much of Montefiore's personal library is now housed in Southampton's Parkes Library for the Study of Jewish/ non-Jewish Relations. This Library was established within the University in 1964, representing the massive private collection of James Parkes, a Christian pioneer in the fight against antisemitism, the promotion of positive Jewish-Christian relations, and the establishment of true histories of the Jewish people and their relations with non-Jews.

Since then, the study of Jewish History and Culture has developed enormously at the University of Southampton where you will find: a dedicated team of specialists in Jewish History and Culture on the teaching staff; a large undergraduate community already taking well-established specialist courses in Jewish History and Culture; a thriving postgraduate community with more than 35 students in MA and PhD programmes on Jewish History and Culture; a prestigious research centre dedicated to the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations; and the superb resources of the Parkes Library and archives. Our commitment to research-led teaching is reflected in the activities of Southampton's team of scholars dedicated to research and teaching in Jewish History and Culture. The outstanding quality of our research record received the highest recognition in 2000 in the form of a major five-year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), establishing the AHRC Parkes Centre for the Study of Jewish / non-Jewish Relations. Southampton is exceptional in having outstanding library and archive resources for the study of Jewish History and Culture: the collections currently house more than one million items and are constantly expanding.