Iveta Leitane studied philosophy at the University of Latvia (Riga) and philosophy, religious studies and Jewish studies at the Karl Eberhard University of Tuebingen. She received her doctorate from the University of Tuebingen in 1998. After completing her PhD, she initially worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Academy of Sciences (Latvia). From 2001 to 2007, she was Associate Professor at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Latvia and headed the Chair of Church History. She has been a visiting fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the University of Tuebingen, Princeton University, the University of Cologne, the University of Bonn, the University of Leipzig, the University of Marburg, EPHE (Paris), the Catholic University of Ružomberok, Ottawa University and Tel Aviv University. Further research stays have taken her to the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the German Historical Institute in Paris and Warsaw and the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig. Since September 2023, she has been a Research Associate at the Macmillan Center at Yale University. Her fields of research include Jewish cultural, philosophical and legal history, (Jewish) Neo-Kantianism and a comparative study of law and religion in literature.