Dr. Mandel-Edrei is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Herzog Research Institute of Late Hasidism and a lecturer at the Open University. Mandel-Edrei earned her B.A. and M.A in Hebrew Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She wrote her Master thesis on the early poetry of Avot Yeshurun and published an article on that topic in Prooftexts. She earned her Ph.D in Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland where she wrote her dissertation on Hasidic literature from the mid-nineteenth century Habsburg Galicia. She published articles on that matter in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies and Gal-Ed: on the History and Culture of Polish Jewry. Throughout the years Mandel-Edrei taught courses on Hebrew literature, Jewish literatures, representations of the Holocaust, film studies, and the history of eastern European Jewry. Her research interests include modern Hebrew literature, canonization and literary historiography, narrative theory, critical theory, the relations of aesthetics and politics, and Hasidism. These days She is working on her monograph about Hasidic literature as modern popular culture.