Billie Melman

Billie Melman was born in 1952 in Tel Aviv

Billie Melman was born in Tel Aviv in 1952 to Galila and Shmuel Rosenzweig. She studied history for her first degree at Tel Aviv University. She then earned a doctorate at University College London in 1984, writing on popular images of women between the two world wars.

From 1984 she taught at Tel Aviv University until she retired in December 2021. She became a full professor in 2005 and headed the School of History from 2008 to 2013. She held visiting fellowships at Harvard, the University of Michigan and New York University.

Her research covers British cultural history, Western European colonialism, gender history, and how the past was seen in modern Europe. Her 1992 book on English women and the Middle East responded to Edward Said's work on Orientalism. She helped found the women and gender history division of the Israeli Historical Society and was its first chair.

She joined the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 2016. She received the Landau Prize in 2006 and the Israel Prize for General History in 2026. She is married to journalist Yossi Melman.