Joan Bieder

jbieder@berkeley.edu

Professor Bieder teaches digital reporting, producing, and storytelling for television news. Before coming to Berkeley, she was a producer for ABC Network News and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Bieder’s recent course, Reporting on Israel and the Palestinian Territories, produced work for television, documentary, radio, and print. Her research area focuses on the history of the Baghdadi Jewish community in Singapore, an orthodox group of traders that arrived in the 1830s whose descendants still survive today led by a rabbi with Sephardic roots. Her work revealed a little-known, long-forgotten visit by Albert Einstein to the community in 1922 to raise funds for Hebrew University. She has lectured widely on various aspects of the community and continues researching aspects of other Jewish communities in South and Southeast Asia.