Prof. Ephraim (Effie) Shoham-Steiner (b. 1968) is a historian specializing in Medieval Jewish History. He is an associate professor at the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er-Shevah Israel (BGU) He is also the director of The Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters at BGU. His research focuses on the social aspects of Jewish history with a special interest in social information that can be extracted from rabbinic source material from medieval Western Europe. His first book published originally in Hebrew titled:  חריגים בעל כורחם: משוגעים ומצורעים בחברה היהודית באירופה בימי הביניים (מרכז שז"ר: ירושלים 2007) was published in English: On the Margins of a Minority (Wayne State University Press: Detroit 2014). He edited of collected essays titled: Intricate Interfaith Networks: Quotidian Jewish Christian Contacts in the Middle Ages (History of Daily Life 5) (Brepols: Turnhout 2016). His second book is titled: Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe was published by Wayne State University Press in 2020. He is currently researching the medieval Jewish community of Cologne.