Prof. Dr. Nimrod Luz

CURRICULUM VITAE

Prof. Nimrod Luz (PhD in Geography and Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies 2001, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a cultural-political geographer focusing on theories of the spatialization of culture, urbanism, religion and the reflexive relations between society and space.

He held post-docs positions at UW-Madison, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  
Between 2005 to 2018 he was a faculty member at Western Galilee College and in 2018 he joined Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee where he currently serves as Head of Research Authority.
He holds numerous fellowships in various research centers among them the Max Planck, TOPOI, and the 2007-2008 Fulbright Professor in Residence at IU-South Bend.
He has published widely on urban history of the Middle East, politics of sacred sites in contested regions, and enchanted religious manifestations in contemporary cities.

Currently he leads Religiocity, an Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) project on religion(s) in cities.

Email at Kinneret Academic College: Luznimrod@mx.kinneret.ac.il

The Infrastructures of Religiocity in Acre
Materialities of Faiths and their Politics in a Mixed Israeli City

This project seeks to fill an important lacuna at the intersection of the study of religions and the urban sphere and aims to contextualize further distinct urban religious subjectivities and spatialities. In this project I explore, among other things, the ways through which cities give rise to distinct religious subjectivities and the contribution of urban religious “subjects” to distinct spatialities. This is explored through the analysis of various urban structures and religious influence and activity therein: planning, education, religious institutions, public sphere. Taking contemporary Acre, a multi-religious and ethnically mixed Israeli city as its subject, the project explores the relational spatialities between religion(s) and the city, focusing mainly on religious urban infrastructures and materialities.

Selected publications

• Luz, N. (2014). Reading Mamluk Cities: Culture and the Urban Landscape. Cities and Urbanism of the Pre-Modern Middle East. New York: Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Cambridge University Press. (265 pages)
• Luz, N. (Ed.). (2004). Islam, Society, and Space in Jerusalem. Past and Present. The New East, XLIV (Hamizrach Hachadash). The Israel Oriental Society, The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magness Press. [in Hebrew]. (850 copies) (305 pages).
• Luz, N. (2021). Unholy Religious Encounters and the Development of Jerusalem’s urban Landscape. Between Particularism and Exceptionalism. In: M. Giora and M. Burchardt (eds.), Geographies of Encounter: The Rise and Fall of Multi-Religious Spaces. London: Palgrave Mcmillan.
• Luz, N. (2021). Spatial Discourses of Sanctity as Means of Resistance in a Contested City. In: M. Greira and M. Burchardt (eds.), Religion in Action. London: Bloomsbury.
• Luz, N. (2021) Eating Israeliness during Covid 19 Lockdown. A Short Ethnography of Students’ Field Dairies in Israeli Periphery. Israeli Sociology 21/2, 207-218.
• Luz, N. (2020). Materiality as an Agency of Knowledge. Competing Forms of Knowledge Concerning Rachel’s Tomb in Tiberias. Journeys. The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing 21/1 (on-line publication)
• Luz, N. (2020). Pilgrimage and Religious Tourism in Islam. Annals of Tourism Research, 82 (on-line publication)
• Luz, N. and Stadler, N. (2019) Religious Urban Decolonization: New Mosques/Antique Cities. Colonial Settler Society, 9, 284-300.
• Luz, N. (2018). The Holy Land from the Mamluk Sultanate to the Ottoman Empire. In: R. Hoyland and H. Williamson (eds.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Holy Land (pp. 230-257). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Collins-Kreiner N. and Luz N. (2018). Judaism and Tourism over the Ages: The Impacts of Technology, Geopolitics and the Changing Political Landscape. In R. Butler and W. Suntikul (eds.), Tourism and Religion (pp. 51-67). London: Channel View Publications.
• Napolitano, V., Luz, N., Stadler, N. (2015) Introduction: Borderlands and Religion’: Materialities, Histories and the transformations of State Sovereignty. Journal of Religion & Society. 1-8.
• Luz, N. (2008). The Politics of Sacred Places. Palestinian identity, collective memory, and resistance in the Hassan Bek mosque conflict. Society and Space: Environment and Planning D, 26(6), 1036-1052.
• Luz, N. (2002). Aspects of Islamization of Space and Society in Mamlūk Jerusalem and Its Hinterland. Mamlūk Studies Review, 6, 135-155.