Rachel Smith is the Mark and Anla Cheng Kingdon Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. Her research examines the history, politics, and ethics of knowledge production and representation among Ottoman Sephardic communities. Against the backdrop of expanding empires, the rise of anthropology, and shifting notions of race, she explores how travelers and teachers, rabbis and journalists produced, circulated, and mobilized ethnographic and racialized knowledge in service of different visions of reform. She earned her PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and holds a BA/MA in Linguistic Anthropology from New York University and a dual-MA in Jewish History and Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary.