David Nirenberg-27 crop

David Nirenberg

Director and Leon Levy Professor

 

 

Home institution

The University of Chicago

David Nirenberg is the 10th Director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study. A historian and author, Nirenberg is recognized for wide-ranging scholarship on the interaction of Christians, Jews, and Muslims. His research provides insight into questions of racism, Anti-Semitism, and Christian-Muslim relations.

At the University of Chicago, Nirenberg served as founding director of the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Dean of the Social Sciences, Executive Vice Provost, and Interim Dean of the Divinity School.  Nirenberg is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Medieval Academy of America.

His most recent books include Uncountable: A Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present (2021), co-authored with his father (Ricardo Nirenberg), which seeks to understand the powers and limits of the sciences and the humanities, and The Power of History and the Place of the Historian in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2026), which joins historical, philosophical, and theological inquiry to illuminate the many possibilities of relation between past and present.  

Visits

Director
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Visitor
School of Historical Studies
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Degrees

Princeton University
Ph.D.
1992
Princeton University
M.A.
1989
Yale University
A.B.
1986

Honors

Awards: Balzan Prize 2026; Leopold Lucas Prize, University of Tübingen 2024; Historikerpreis, City of Münster 2017; Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Phi Beta Kappa 2014; John Nicholas Brown Prize, Medieval Academy of America 2000; Herbert Baxter Adams Prize, American Historical Association 1999; Premio del Rey Prize, American Historical Association 1997
Honorary Degrees: Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 2026; Doctor of Philosophy, Honoris Causa, University of Haifa 2016
Memberships: American Philosophical Society 2024; American Academy of Arts and Sciences, History and Philosophy/Religion sections 2016; Medieval Academy of America 2015

Appointments

University of Chicago
Dean, Divinity School (2018–22); Executive Vice Provost (2017–18); Dean, Division of the Social Sciences (2014–17); Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Distinguished Service Professor (2008–22); Professor (2006–08)
Rice University
Director, Center for the Study of Cultures (1997–2000); Associate Professor of History (1996–2000); Assistant Professor of History (1992–96)
Johns Hopkins University
Director, Leonard & Helen R. Stulman Jewish Studies Program (2002–07); Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of the Humanities (2000–06)
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society
Founding Director (2011–14)
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Visiting Professor (2000)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid
Visiting Professor (Summer 2011)