Martin Stechauner served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Selma Stern Zentrum in summer (July) 2019. He completed his dissertation project (The Sephardic Jews of Vienna: A Jewish Minority Crossing Borders) in 2019. It was carried out within the framework of the Co-Tutelle de Thèse (joint study program) between the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The project was supervised by Prof. Wolfram Reiss (Vienna), Prof. David Bunis (Jerusalem) and Dr. Michael Silber (Jerusalem). Mr. Stechauner also holds an M.A. (Magister) in Religious Studies (2013) from the University of Vienna. From 2013 to 2015 he was a research fellow at the Center of Austrian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 2015 to 2018 his PhD project was funded by the Doctoral Fellowship Programme (DOC) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

Mr. Stechauner’s research interests include Sephardic and Oriental Judaism, Jewish history in the Habsburg Lands and contemporary Austria, as well as religious movements within the realms of the former Ottoman Empire. At the Selma Stern Zentrum, he was closely collaborating with Dr. Susanne Härtel who herself is a member of the ZJS research group Sefardische Perspektiven: Jüdisch-jüdische Begegnungen im Osmanischen Reich/Mittelmeerraum.