Ronnie
Agassi Cohen

Ronnie Agassi Cohen is a PhD student in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Dr. Julia Rubanovich and Prof. Eyal Ginio.

Ronnie studies the history of the Ottoman Empire with a focus on the influence of Persian culture and literature on the development of Ottoman identity.

By analyzing historical works written in the Ottoman Empire in Persian and Turkish, her research identifies the intertextual connections between these texts and other prominent Persian literary works. She thus traces the links between historical writing in Persian and the development of Ottoman imperial identity during the second half of the fifteenth century. Ronnie hopes to offer a broader view of the cultural and intellectual changes following the transformation of the Ottoman state into an empire and present a unique perspective on cultural connections and identity formation in the pre-modern Middle East.

Ronnie grew up in Ra’anana and currently lives with her husband and child in Kfar Saba. She received her BA and MA in Middle Eastern and African history from Tel Aviv University. She is a member of the research group Past and Past Perfect at the Mandel Scholion Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In addition to her research, in the past few years she has been part of “Great History in a Nutshell,” a voluntary project promoting public history education via social media. In her free time, she enjoys listening to podcasts and audiobooks, watching movies, and spending time with her family.