Dr Estara J Arrant is a linguist of Semitic languages, a scholar of medieval Jewish and Islamic textual history and culture, and a data and computer scientist and software developer. She is the University Library’s inaugural Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow (January 2025 – December 2027).
Dr Arrant’s main research interest lies in creating innovative data/computer science and applied mathematical approaches to help address longstanding questions in our knowledge of Jewish and Islamic languages and cultures. She works also on the linguistics, philology, and codicology of everyday engagement with scriptures in the Genizah, and has an active interest in the evolution of the Hebrew Bible, Qur’ān, Arabic and Aramaic Bible translations, Tafsīr and Midrash.
Her Leverhulme project, titled ‘Regaining Lost Realities: Medieval Judaeo-Arabic and the Society that Shaped It’ seeks to better understand the Arabic language of the diverse Jewish population of medieval Egypt (specifically Alexandria) through a combination of historical linguistics, prosopography, and various machine learning approaches. Working on a corpus of Judaeo-Arabic letters from the Genizah, her project involves the creation of the first NLP (Natural Language Processing) model for medieval Judaeo-Arabic and uses data mining and network analysis techniques to connect patterns in the language to the sociocultural realities reflected in the codicology, content, and paratextual elements of the letters.
Dr Arrant formerly was a postdoctoral research associate at the Genizah Research Unit on the ERC-funded project TEXTEVOLVE: A New Approach to the Evolution of Texts Based on the Manuscripts of the Targums. Her role in this project was to adapt bioinformatics algorithms used in evolutionary biology to analyse the textual evolution of medieval Targum manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah, Europe, and the Middle East, as well as to create new digital tools to assist in the analysis of large, complex textual data from the Targum text traditions. She is currently preparing a monograph on the computational advances of this project as well as a software module for computerised stemmatology.
Her PhD, titled, A Codicological and Linguistic Typology of Common Torah Codices from the Cairo Genizah, was completed at the University of Cambridge (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Christ’s College), under the supervision of Professor Geoffrey Khan. Her thesis (and externally published case study) utilised machine learning algorithms, statistics, and a relational database to analyse the codicological and linguistic features of around 1,800 Torahs written by and for everyday people (including children) from the 10th-15th c. Middle East. Such methodology revealed the presence of distinct common book styles across the regions. She also found that the non-standard language features of these Bibles reflected a variety of external linguistic influences, showing evidence of imperfect performance, Arabicised phonology, and historical influence from Aramaic. She completed her MPhil in Islamic Studies and History at the University of Oxford (Worcester College, supervisor Prof. Nicolai Sinai), where she focused on the linguistic structure of Qur’ānic and pre-Islamic Jewish creation narratives. Her undergraduate studies were in History and Modern Hebrew.
Dr Arrant is also a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Trinity Hall, where she engages with fellow researchers and students to explore intersections between the Sciences and the Humanities, and an Associate of Cambridge Digital Humanities, where she teaches workshops in Python and R and is assisting in developing an online programming course in these languages.
Publications:
Forthcoming Articles
‘An Exploration of Genizah Targum Fragments as Objects of Personal Study and Everyday Use’ in J.C.E. Watson et al. (eds.), Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers.
‘Babylonian Tradition of Targum Jonathan’ in Handbook of Biblical Manuscripts, Textual History of the Bible Series, Brill.
Published Articles:
(2022) ‘A Further Analysis of the ‘Byzantine (Italian-Levantine) Triad’ of Features in Common Torah Codices’, in Studies in the Masoretic Tradition of the Hebrew Bible, eds. Daniel J. Crowther, Aaron D. Hornkohl, and Geoffrey Khan. Semitic Languages, Literatures and Cultures. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. Read Here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0330/chapters/10.1...
(2022) ‘A Story of Scribal Collaboration: The Targum of T-S 6H5.1’, Fragment of the Month, Genizah Research Unit, September 2022. Read Here: https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-geniz...
(2020) Nick Posegay and Estara J Arrant. "Three Fragments of a Judaeo-Arabic Translation of Ecclesiastes with Full Tiberian Vocalisation."Intellectual History of the Islamicate World pp. 1–38, doi: 10.1163/2212943X-bja10001. Published as an advance article: 08 Dec. 2020. https://brill.com/view/journals/ihiw/aop/article-10.1163-2212943X-bja100...
(2020) Arrant, Estara J. ‘An Exploratory Typology of Near-Model and Non-Standard Tiberian Torah Manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah’. In Studies in Semitic Vocalization and Reading Traditions, edited by Aaron D. Hornkohl and Geoffrey Khan. Semitic Languages and Cultures. Cambridge: University of Cambridge & Open Book Publishers, pgs. 467-547. https://www.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/OBP.0207.pdf
(2019). Arrant, E. J. Standard Tiberian Pronunciation in a Non-Standard Form: T-S AS 64.206. [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, April 2019]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.45330
(2018) Arrant, Estara J. 'The Structural and Linguistic Features of Three Hebrew Begging Letters from the Cairo Genizah', in Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts: A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan, Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 30, 2018. pp. 352-375. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1192909/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Blog Posts
(2021) Arrant, Estara J. 'Hastening after the Glimmer of Dawn: A Personal Judaeo-Arabic Translation of Ecclesiastes'. Biblia Arabica, ed. Prof. Ronny Vollandt. 09 March 2021. https://biblia-arabica.com/hastening-after-the-glimmer-of-dawn-a-persona...
PhD Thesis (Digitised):
Arrant, E. (2021). A Codicological and Linguistic Typology of Common Torah Codices from the Cairo Genizah (Doctoral thesis).https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.74938 Link: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/327486?fbclid=IwAR2GcYmNavo...