In its thirteenth consecutive year, the ucLADINO conference supports and celebrates the growing preservation of Ladino language and culture in the Judeo-Spanish diaspora. The theme for this year’s ucLADINO conference centers around Ladino in and beyond the home, exploring language and culture in domestic spaces and in migration. How has Ladino taken shape within domestic worlds and how has Ladino adapted in transit, carried from one home to the next?

Schedule

(with links)

Panel 1 | Ladino Travels                                               9:10 – 10:05 AM PST

Panel 2 | Jewish Texts & Translations                          10:10 – 11:05 PM PST

Keynote | Margaret Boyle                             11:10 – 12:05 PM PST

Cuídate, hija: Language, Food, and Memory

Featured Roundtable | Digital Revitalization of Ladino  1:00-1:55 PM PST

Panel 3 |Ladino Linguistics: the Politics of Language         2:00 – 2:55 PM PST

Panel 4 | Gender & Tradition                                           3:05 – 4:00 PM PST

Featured Roundtable | American Ladino League         4:00 – 4:55 PM PST

Panel 1:  Ladino Travels: Homeland, Space, & Empire   

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 9:10 AM – 10:05 AM PST

Adam Mahler | Harvard University

Samuel Usque’s Consolação às Tribulações de Israel

Adam Mahler is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, where he is completing his dissertation on environmental and ethnorepresentative writing in medieval and early modern Iberia. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in PMLA, Speculum, and Hispanic Review, among other journals.

Olmo Masa | Complutense University of Madrid

The Many Homelands of Joseph Nehama: Salonica, Spanish Diplomacy and the Limits of Philosephardism

Doctor in Political Science at the Complutense University of Madrid with a thesis on Holocaust memory politics in Spain in the XXI century. Currently postdoc researcher at the Institute for Jewish and Religious Studies of the University of Potsdam with a DFG-funded project on the Jews with Spanish citizenship in France and Greece during WWII. He has been a visiting researcher at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and at Amherst College in Massachusetts, US. His articles have appeared in journals like Holocaust Studies. A Journal of Culture and History, and the Journal of Holocaust Research. He has contributed chapters for edited volumes at Spanish publishing houses like Catarata and Ecobooks.

Sanka Trifunovic | University of Vienna

Performance Venues of the Karagoz Ottoman Shadow Theater

Sanja Trifunovic is a linguist and orientalist, who is currently a PhD student at the University of Vienna, and who also takes online classes in endangered Jewish languages at the University of Oxford (OSRJL). She holds an MSc in linguistics from the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, where she also graduated in modern and Ottoman Turkish language and literature, Arabic and English. Her research interests include anthropological and cognitive linguistics, language typology, endangered Jewish languages, Sephardic studies, folklore, theatre and cinema. She has presented at several international conferences in the field of Jewish Sephardic studies, including the 12th annual ucLADINO conference.

Stephanie Anne Zager | University of Maryland

From Expulsion to Expansion: Escabeche’s Global Culinary Footprint” 

Stephanie Anne Zager is a historian and librarian-in-training pursuing dual Master’s degrees in History and Library and Information Science at the University of Maryland. She graduated cum laude from UCLA in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Minor in Information and Media Literacy. 

Her current research focuses on early modern Spanish Jewish history, with a focus on food, domestic life, and cultural practices in Spain and the immediate diaspora. Previous research projects include studies on Sephardic foodways in early modern Mexico, the Dreyfus Affair’s impact on public discourse, and the transformation of Los Angeles’ Fairfax District. Her work on the Fairfax District, conducted with Professor David N. Myers, was published in the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy’s Annual Report in 2024, and she presented this project at the American Jewish Historical Society Conference. Her research on the Dreyfus Affair was also published in UCLA’s Quaestio History Journal.

Panel 2:  Jewish Texts & Translations  

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 10:10 AM – 11:05 AM PST

David Bunis | 

A Little-Known French Friend of the Judezmo Speakers in Late Nineteenth-Century Constantinople”

Javier Leibiusky | INALCO & Universities of Lille 

Pirqey ʾAvot’s Meʿam Loʿez (Rabbi Isaac Magriso, Constantinople, 1753) – translation, commentary and linguistic calque.

Javier Leibiusky was born in Buenos Aires and grew up in Israel. He has lived in Paris, France since 2007, where he works as a Hebrew teacher at INALCO and Lille universities. His topics of research are Ottoman Jews immigration to Buenos Aires (on which he just published a book in Spanish “Del Bosforo a Villa Crespo”, and Judeo-Spanish linguistics and culture, the subject of his PhD work. He also published short stories, books and novels, mostly in French.

David Manrique | 

The Zohar in Ladino: Translation, Adaptation, and Rabbinic Control in the Sephardic Tradition”

Keynote 

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 11:10 AM – 12:05 PM PST

Margaret Boyle | Bowdoin College

Cuídate, hija: Language, Food, and Memory

Margaret E. Boyle’s teaching and research spans the languages, literature and cultures of early modern Spain and colonial Latin America. She is the author of Unruly Women: Performance, Penitence and Punishment in Early Modern Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and co-editor of Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective (with Sarah Owens, University of Toronto Press, 2021). Her primary interests include Hispanic women’s literary and cultural history, comedia history and performance, and health humanities, including medical, spiritual and food cultures. Her newest book is Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook (with Ilan Stavans, University of North Carolina Press, 2024), named a 2025 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Professor Boyle is the director of Multilingual Mainers, an elementary world languages and cultures program providing age-appropriate tools to combat xenophobia, racism and intolerance through engagement with languages other than English. She has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Whiting Foundation for work in cultural and international exchange. She is a scholar-partner for UCLA’s Diversifying the Classics Initiative.

Featured Roundtable:  The Digital Revitalization of Ladino in the 21st C.  

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 1:00 PM – 1:55 AM PST

Carlos Yebra López |  California State University, Fullerton

Carlos Yebra López is an Assistant Professor in Spanish Linguistics at California State University, Fullerton. He has worked as a Ladino instructor at the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages, and as a CEO of Ladino 21 Community Interest Company, a public outreach initiative and digital archive devoted to grassroots documentation of Ladino. 

Joël-Esther Verard | 

Joël-Esther Verard [she/her/אייה] Joël is a neurodiverse London-based Jewish Studies student and creative. In 2025, she spawned DjOHA KAT, Instagram and TikTok to combine her passion for Judezmo with contemporary social media trends into a delightful blend of memes, bavajadas, and lifestyle content. Committed to honouring her Sephardic ancestry, she channelled her creativity into creating a collection of Ladino GIFs and digital stickers. She is also writing and illustrating a children’s book to inspire the next generation through storytelling. 

Monefa Walker | 

Monefa Walker was born and raised in London, with Caribbean Jewish roots. A classical musician, and languages student, completing her final BA year currently (Modern Languages: Spanish and French). Monefa utilises the joy of learning languages, to reconnect with her Sephardic heritage. 

Emunah Woolf | 

Emunah Woolf is a Toronto-based scholar and Jewish educator. Their research focuses on disability, grassroots organizing, and hope.  Emunah runs the HAMSA (Honouring & Affirming Mizrahi/Sepharadi Ancestry) program at their local JCC, in addition to offering programming for LGBTQ+ community members.

Panel 3:  Ladino Linguistics: the Politics of Language 

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 2:00 PM – 2:55 PM PST

Derya Agis | Ankara University

Ladino Proverbs and Idioms with Flowers from a Cognitive Linguistic Perspective

Derya Agis has a Ph.D. in Italian Language and Literature from Ankara University; she has a Master’s in English Linguistics from Hacettepe University, and another Master’s in Social Anthropology from the Middle East Technical University. She has taught at Girne American University and the University of the People. She has presented papers and published extensively in Environmental Humanities. For more details, one can visit her webpage: https://deryaagis.weebly.com

Sarah Benor | 

Ladino Heritage Words: Realistic Transmission of an Endangered Language

Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union

College–Jewish Institute of Religion and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern

California Linguistics Department. She received her B.A. from Columbia University in

Comparative Literature in 1997 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in

2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and

Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion:

Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University

Press, 2020), as well as many articles about Jewish languages, Yiddish, and American

Jews. Dr. Benor has received several fellowships and prizes, including the Dorot

Fellowship in Israel, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Choice Award for

Jewish Literature, and the National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish

Identity. She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and co-editor of

Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and

We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage (Luminare

Press, 2017). She founded and directs the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project, which

runs the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. She is currently

working on a project analyzing the names Jews give their children and their pets.

Marcel Mechulam | Independent Scholar 

Examples of Ladino Word Constructions from Medieval Spanish and others modified by Languages from the Balkan countries

Dr. Marcel Israel, Ph.D., trained in Industrial Controls and Telecommunications. A Sephardic Jew, born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, living alternately in Madrid/ Spain and Sofia/ Bulgaria. Speaks Ladino as a native language. Former President of the Central Religious Council of the Jewish Communities in Bulgaria and currently a Board member of Religions for Peace Europe based in Berlin (formerly in Brussels). For about 40 years working as an independent scholar in Jewish History and Linguistics, presenting multiple scientific contributions at conferences, seminars, or webinars in different countries in Europe, the USA, and South America. 

Julia Peck | UC Berkeley Linguistics Department

Ladino en Kaza: Bringing Ladino Home via Language Nesting

Julia Peck (she/her/eya) is a PhD student in the UC Berkeley Linguistics Department. She primarily works on Ladino revitalization, as well as the linguistic effects of the language’s contact with Turkish and French. Julia received her bachelor’s degree in Anthropology with a special concentration in Linguistics from Columbia University and then her master’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Oxford as an Ertegun Scholar in the Humanities.

Panel 4:  Gender & Tradition in the Ladino Novel & the Sephardic Kitchen 

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 3:05 PM – 4:00 PM PST

Lilian Cano | 

Imposed Identities: Language, Gender, and Sephardic Expectations in Novia que te vea

Inci Cetin |

Last and Lasting: Myriam Moscona’s Contemporary Kantikas

Esti Hasid | Bar Ilan University

Esterina Avlastina: a young woman with an old language

A 38-year-old woman Who speaks Ladino a Mother tongue. My first word was in Ladino. I grew up with Ladino and also dream in Ladino. I am an M.A student in Salti Institute for Ladino Research in Bar Ilan University and also a coordinator in the Arab department. I speak 5 languages: Ladino, Hebrew, Turkish, English, and spanish. And a little bit Arabic. Dream to be the “Ladino-fibrilator” 

Hernán Rodríguez Fisse | 

Rekordos De La Chikez : Espondjar – Chaftear – Fregar

Hernán Rodriguez Fisse was born in Santiago de Chile in 1950, his father being born in Edime and his mother in Istanbul. Both families descend from Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. They emigrated to Chile in 1949. He has a degree in Public Administration from Universidad de Chile and a graduate degree in Journalism from Catholic University. He is a Master of Arts in Political Science and a Doctor in International Relations. He teaches international business and business negotiation and conflict resolution at the Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Santiago, and Universidad Federico Santa Maria. He is director and editor of the Art, Science and Literature magazine Zejel and a permanent collaborator of the magazines El Amaneser of Istanbul, Aki Yerushalayim of Israel, Foro of Mexico. He has been a leader of the Sephardic community of Santiago for the past thirty years and at present teaches ‘djudezmo’ to the members.

Featured Roundtable: Language Learning and Leadership: A Roundtable Discussion with the Co-Founders of the American Ladino League

Date/Time: Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025, 4:00 PM – 4:55 PM PST

Rachel Bortnick | 

Bryan Kirschen | Binghamton University

Bryan Kirschen is Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Binghamton University. Dr. Kirschen has served as the co-director of the American Ladino League, co-director of Binghamton University’s Ladino Collaboratory, co-organizer of the annual New York Ladino Day, and curator of the Documenting Judeo-Spanish online portal.

Hannah Pressman |