BA, MPhil
Blake Olsen is a first-year DPhil student at Christ Church College working on ritual abstraction, divine encounter, and philosophical hermeneutics in ancient Judaism under the supervision of Professor Hindy Najman. Blake previously completed his MPhil at the University of Cambridge with his MPhil thesis titled, Imitatio Dei in Chronicles: Cult Performance as an Epistemic Process for all Israel in 2 Chronicles 5-7 under the supervision of Professor Nathan MacDonald. Blake also holds a BA in Jewish Studies from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Christian Studies from Crown College, Minnesota.
Blake’s research interests include forms and means of divine encounter in Jewish antiquity, the formation of the individual and communal subject with relation to the divine through ritual practice, and the role of performance in the production of pluriform scriptural texts and traditions.