Vice President for​ Global Engagement

The Vice President for Global Engagement leads the effort to position Ben-Gurion University of the Negev as a world-leading institution. This role focuses on fostering internationalization by expanding the university's global reach and impact.

Our goals for global engagement include increasing the number of international students and partnerships while providing BGU students with enriching international experiences.

Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal

Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal is Vice President for Global Engagement at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In this capacity, she leads the University’s efforts to enhance its international profile, strengthen and expand academic partnerships worldwide, and advance BGU’s global engagement strategy. She is also responsible for developing the University’s internal international infrastructure, ensuring a high-quality and supportive environment for international students and scholars.

Bar-Asher Siegal is a professor in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought.

Her scholarship explores Jewish-Christian interactions in Late Antiquity, with a particular focus on comparative readings of early Christian and rabbinic sources. She has held prestigious visiting professorships at Harvard Law School, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, and was elected a member of the Israel Young Academy of Sciences.

Her first book, Early Christian Monastic Literature and the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2013), received the 2014 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award. Her second book, Jewish-Christian Dialogues on Scripture in Late Antiquity: Heretic Narratives of the Babylonian Talmud (Cambridge University Press, 2019), was a finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Award.