Elisheva Baumgarten is the Yitzchak Becker Professor of Jewish Studies in the Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry Department and the History Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She studies the social and religious history of the Jews of medieval northern Europe (1000-1400). Her research focuses on the social history of the Jewish communities living in the urban centers of medieval Europe and especially on daily contacts between Jews and Christians. It seeks to include those who did not write the sources that have reached us, with a special interest in women and gender hierarchies.

See Beyond the Elite for her current research project.

At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Baumgarten has served as the BA advisor in the Department of Jewish History (2014-2016), co-organizer of the new faculty forum with Dr. Eitan Grossman (2014-2016), chaired the Limud beChevruta project (2014-2016) and was Vice-Dean of Research in the Humanities Faculty (2018-2019). As of fall 2019, she is academic head of the Mandel Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Humanities and Jewish Studies. Baumgarten was a member of the Israel's Young Academy (2014-2018) and served on the executive committee (2016-2017). She was recently chosen as a member of the 2020-2021 Edmond de Rothschild Foundation's Academic Leaders Program.

Baumgarten has received awards and fellowships from the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, EHESS, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Yad Hanadiv Rothschild Foundation and her publications have received several prizes. She is the recipient of the 2016 Michael Bruno Memorial Award for outstanding Israeli researchers. She has received research grants from the Israel Science Foundation, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the German-Israel Foundation and the European Research Council.