Dr. Noam Sienna, a scholar of Jewish book culture in the medieval and early modern Islamic worlds, earned his Ph.D. in history and museum studies from the University of Minnesota, served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, and is a senior fellow with the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. He is the author of Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds (Indiana University Press, 2025) and is currently working on a study of the first Hebrew press in the Ottoman Empire. Sienna is also a book artist, whose work brings together historical and contemporary expressions of Jewish visual and textual culture with a focus on preserving traditions of Hebrew calligraphy and Jewish letterpress printing. His artistic practice explores the intersections of diverse languages, alphabets, and texts across the wide span of Jewish history. In spring 2026, Sienna will serve as the Jerome and Lorraine Aresty Visiting Scholar at the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life.
