Tzafrir Barzilay is a senior lecturer of medieval history in the Department of General History at Bar Ilan University. His work focuses on the social history of western and central Europe in the High and late Middle Ages (1000-1500). He is interested in the history of European minorities, the social implications of environmental and geographical factors, and religious movements in high and late medieval Europe. Barzilay has also published articles on movement and communication in medieval Europe, on violence and its meanings, and on Jewish-Christian relations.
He graduated from Columbia University in New York in 2016, following the completion of a dissertation discussing the development of well-poisoning accusations against minorities in medieval Europe, supervised by Profs. Adam Kosto and Elisheva Carlebach. After holding post-doctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Haifa University, he joined the Department of history at Ber-Ilan University in 2022.
He is the author of Poisoned Wells: Accusation, Persecution and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422 (Philadelphia, 2022) and coeditor, with Elisheva Baumgarten and Eyal Levinson, of Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Northern Europe, 1000-1350: A Sourcebook (Kalamazoo, 2022). From 2022 to 2026, he has been a member of the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) Research Team, 'Digging Deep: Interdisciplinary Study of the Medieval Mikveh in Cologne'.
His courses aspire to guide students in developing the basic tools required for the historian's craft: productive and critical reading of primary and secondary sources, construction of complex arguments, and data analysis. They cover subjects such as Church history, medieval minority groups, on the crusades, history of food and the environment, and the Black Death.