Shir is a PhD candidate in the Art History department at the Hebrew University of Jerusale. She holds a BA in Archaeology and Art History and an MA in Art History from the Hebrew University and is also a graduate of the MA honors program of the Mandel School for Advanced Studies.
Her PhD dissertation, under the supervision of Prof. Rina Talgam, examines the visual aspects of Syrian Christianity in late antiquity, from the third century until the Muslim conquest. Her interest is in the overt and covert dialogue between Jewish and Christian communities in the Syrian-speaking regions, and how it is expressed in religious visual representations. Her research focuses on a collection of floor mosaics from Syrian churches and chapels. The collection displays an enigmatic figurative iconography that is unique among the Byzantine mosaic corpus.