Annika Funke is a PhD candidate at the University of Trier under supervision of Prof. Dr. Lukas Clemens. She works on the communal reorganization of Jews in rural areas after their expulsion from most of the German imperial cities in the late middle ages. Comparing the regions of Alsace and Wetterau, she explores how centrality and dispersion and the development of a regional political advocacy enabled Jewish settlers in small towns and villages to adapt to the challenges of country life. Annika received her bachelors and masters degree from the University of Trier, working on a related topic. She is associate member of the Arye Maimon Institute for Jewish History and part of a research group investigating resilience as a heuristic tool to examine historic coping processes in the face of upheavals.