Cohen began teaching at UNAM in 1975.[4] She became a researcher at UNAM's Institute of Philological Research, where she has led the Poetry Center. In 2015, she began overseeing the center's magazine, Acta Poética.[5][1] In 2019, she was honored as a member of the university's emeritus staff.[6]
In 1982, Cohen traveled to the University of Bologna in Italy, where she studied semiotics under the writer and philosopher Umberto Eco.[3] Her research has frequently dealt with Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, including during the medieval period.[2][3] She has also published works on the persecution of witches in Renaissance Europe, as well as on historical memory and narrative of the Holocaust.[7][8] Her work is heavily influenced by the scholars Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Walter Benjamin.[9]
She has published a wide variety of essays and translations in both domestic and international journals.[3] She is a translator of English, French, Italian, and Portuguese, having produced her first work of translation in 1994 for a collection on the Zohar, a foundational Kabbalah text.[1]
Cohen received the National University Prize in 2010 for her work in the humanities.[4] That same year, she also won the Manuel Levinsky Prize from the Mexican Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists.[1]
Since 2011, she has also served as director of the Memory and Tolerance Museum's Education Center.[1]
