Biography
Jessica Roitman has a Ph.D. in Jewish History from Leiden University. Her work, broadly speaking, focuses on Jewish History in the (Dutch) Caribbean, and is focused on the legacies of colonial experiences on contemporary Jewish notions of identification, incorporation, and citizenship. In particular, she looks at the interaction of minority groups with each other in zones of cross-cultural and transnational interaction from the seventeenth century until the nineteenth centuries. Dr. Roitman has written on Atlantic History, the histories of enslaved and free people of color in the Caribbean, especially women, and Dutch settlement in the Americas. She is currently developing a project that looks at the role of Jews in European colonial empires. She is part of the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University.