Current and Prospective
Gal Levy | (BA, MA, Tel Aviv University; PhD, LSE) is the Acting Academic Director of NYU in Tel Aviv and senior teaching faculty at the Open University, Israel, in the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication. Following his doctoral dissertation, in which he explored how the interrelationship between ethnic politics and educational policy led to the development of the Israeli ethnicized society, Gal became engaged in various research projects that aim to examine the triad of education, ethnicity and citizenship. Most recent research projects focus on the education of children to labour-migrant and on alternative Arab education. His book manuscript, which is under review at CUP, is a political account of the history of education in Israel and its implications for the construction of ethnic identities and conceptions of citizenship. Gal has published locally and internationally on these topics, as well as on class- and ethnic-voting in the Israeli general elections.
Sylvana Foa | worked for many years as a war correspondent covering conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Lebanon. Other hot spots included Iran during the fall of the Shah, Poland during the rise of the Solidarity movement, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and the assassination of Indira Gandhi. She was the first woman to become foreign editor of a major news organization and the first woman to become news director of an American television network. She was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Foa moved to the UN in 1991 to work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva handling crises from the Iraqi Kurd exodus to the war in Bosnia and the massacre in Rwanda. She went on to become the first woman appointed to be the Spokesman to the Secretary General of the United Nations.
Meirav Aharon | is an Urban Sociologist and a visiting professor at the Department of Architecture, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Israel and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her fields of specialization include: Culture and Citizenship, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, Qualitative research methods, Nationalism, Israeli Society and Culture, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Labor Market. Among her publications: "Border people: the Story of Palestinian work Migrant at the Age of Oslo" Israeli Sociology "Quality of life" and "Life" in the Modernist Plan City" Planning - Journal of the Association for Environmental Planning in Israel, "'Put your hands together for the Israel Andalusian Orchestra!' Toward critical discussion on the notion of multiculturalism" Alpayim 33. The Day The Sun Rises in the West - Ethnography of a Peace Process International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society "Classic, Mizrachi Orchestra", Theory and Criticism.
Gal Harmat | is a Critical Pedagogy, Gender and Peace Building Specialist. She has extensive experience in teaching Hebrew (and English) as a second language using critical pedagogy's methodologies. Other areas of Harmat's expertise include lecturing, training, conflict analysis, dialogue facilitation and gender empowerment research. She has been lecturing at the Seminar Hakibutzim Teachers' College since 2004, and teaching Hebrew as a second language in various settings. Currently Gal is a guest lecturer at the European Peace University and Salzburg University (Austria), Transcend Peace University and PATRIR peace research institute. She is a regular consultant for intergovernmental organizations, corporate donors, and peace organizations. Gal holds a Bachelor Degree in Art, a Master of Arts in Gender and Peace building from the UN-Mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and is currently a PhD candidate in Gender Analysis of Multi-Cultural Education at Nitra University (Slovakia).
Michael Shalev | is a professor of sociology and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born and initially educated in New Zealand, he holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California (Berkeley), Duke University, University of Washington (Seattle), and Stockholm University. Shalev's areas of specialization are political sociology, political economy, the welfare state and social stratification, and he is also an expert on quantitative methodologies in comparative research. Shalev is the author of Labour and the Political Economy in Israel (Oxford University Press, 1992), a history of the politics and policies of the labor movement in Israel. He has also published authoritative articles on a variety of contemporary aspects of Israeli politics and political economy, including class voting, the welfare state, and the rise of neoliberal economic policies. Shalev has published widely in the field of comparative politics and sociology, most recently on the relationship between gender and class inequality. A selection of his publications can be viewed on the web: Papers by Michael Shalev
Moshe Berent | teaches various courses on politics, religion and democracy at the Department of Sociology Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel. He has received his MA degree in Political Philosophy from Tel Aviv University under the instruction of Prof. Joseph Agassi and his PhD in Comparative Political History from Cambridge University UK under the instruction of Prof. Ernest Gellner. His major research fields are Ancient Greece (with particular interest in the polis) and Modern Nationalism. His book on Israeli national identity is forthcoming in Hebrew in 2009.
Mohammad Massalha | is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he completed MA degree in sociology under the instruction of Prof. Reuben Kahana and his PhD in Sociology of youth and generations under the supervision of Prof. Tamar Rappaport. Mohammad teaches various courses on sociology of education, sociology of adolescence, generations and Palestinian-Arab society at the Department of Sociology Political Science and Communication at the Open University of Israel. He is currently involved in research on alternative Arab education in Israel, and his other fields of research include the sociology of education in Israeli society, and sociology of Adolescence and Youth.
Ofer Nordheimer Nur | is a Teaching Fellow at Tel Aviv University's Department of General and Interdisciplinary Studies. He received his PhD in history at UCLA in 2004, won a two year post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre d'Etudes Juives at the EHESS in Paris and a second two year post-doctoral fellowship at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In his dissertation Dr. Nur wrote a cultural history of a group of young men and women who were some of the founders of the kibbutz movement in Palestine in the 1920s. Dr. Nur's book Eros, community, Kibbutz: Jewish Male Fantasies 1918-1924 is currently under review at Brandeis University Press.
Yuval Gadot | holds a PhD in Archaeology of ancient Israel, and is working at the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University as the director of the Ramat Rahel expedition and the director of the Ancient Israel research group: the natural and hard science approach. He has taught archaeology of ancient Israel in numerous institutions. In 2009 he will teach a course on Archaeology and Environment, at the Porter school for Environmental Studies. Yuval completed his PhD in 2004 at Tel-Aviv University under the guidance of Prof. Israel Finkelstein and Prof. Moshe Kochavi. Yuval is currently directing the field work at the renewed excavations at the site of Ramat Rahel and co-directing the field work in the two community based projects at Lod and Modi'in. A book: 'Aphek-Antipatris II' co-written and edited by me, is forthcoming in 2009. He also authored and co-authored a number of articles that were published in scientific journals centered on the archaeology in history of Ancient Israel.
Ella Keren | is an Africanist who graduated from Tel Aviv University. Although her teaching centres on colonial and post-colonial Africa (at the Open university and Ben Gurion University), she specialized on slavery and slave trade. Ella wrote her PhD dissertation on the collective memory and commemoration of slavery and the trans Atlantic slave trade in West Africa, mainly in Ghana. She is also a social activist, and in 1998 she participated in founding "The Hotline for Migrant Workers", a human rights organization whose aim is to protect the human rights of migrant workers, victims of trafficking in women and refugees. Ella is a member in the board of directors, and her activities include frequent visits to jail where migrant workers and asylum seekers are held prior to their deportation, organizing public events and writing reports.
Ze'ev Emmerich | (BA, MA Tel Aviv University) is a doctorate candidate at the University of Cambridge (UK). His research and teaching to date engage many central questions in political philosophy and the history of political thought. His doctoral research entitled Reconsidering Contextualism addresses a significant philosophical faultline in the human sciences, examining the longstanding question of the relations between political theories and their historical context. He has also published on the connections between aesthetics and political thought (focusing especially on the theory and practice of architecture), and the politics of identity in Israel. Most recently he contributed a chapter on international political theory in Political Thought and International Relations (OUP: 2009 edited by D Bell). Ze'ev was invited to participate in a collection of essays on The Cambridge School for Princeton University Press. He has an extensive and wide-ranging teaching experience in different disciplines – philosophy, politics, and sociology - in different institutional settings in the UK and Israel.
Eytan Fox | is an acclaimed director and writer whose 2004 film WALK ON WATER – a story of a Mossad secret service agent who befriends the gay grandson of an ex-Nazi officer – has become the most successful Israeli film abroad. Previously, 2002's YOSSI & JAGGER, the love affair between two officers in the Israeli army, became an international breakout hit. Born in New York City, at an early age Fox moved with his family to Israel. He grew up in Jerusalem, then studied at Tel Aviv University's School of Film and Television. His first film, TIME OFF, a 45-minute drama about sexual identity in the Israeli army, won him acclaim and led to the making his first feature, SONG OF THE SIREN, a romantic comedy which became Israel's biggest box office success in 1994. He also created and directed the Israeli TV dramatic series FLORENTINE, which examined the life of young people in Tel Aviv before and after the Rabin assassination. Fox ran the film program at the Alon high school for the arts in Ramat Hasharon, and has taught filmmaking at Tel Aviv University's School of Film and Television as well as at Sapir and Beit Berel colleges.
Halleli Pinson | is a lecturer at the Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and also a Research Fellow at the Van-Leer Jerusalem Institute. She earned her PhD at the University of Cambridge in the sociology of education and her main areas of research are: citizenship education, youth identities, forced migration and education, conflict education and Arab eductaion in Israel. Halleli has published on these topics internationally and nationally.
Menachem Klein | is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, where he has taught for more than 15 years. Professor Klein is a widely respected commentator on Palestinian issues and the Peace Process in the international and Israeli media. He is a longtime member of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and worked closely with the Israeli Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Interior Security during the administration of President Ehud Barak as an advisor on Palestinian affairs and the Israel-PLO Final Status talks. Dr. Klein’s research, writing and teaching span a broad range of issues, including Comparative Middle East Politics, Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, Ethno-national relations in Israel/Palestine divided cities, and Jewish and Islamic Radical Movements. Dr. Klein earned his Ph.D. from Hebrew University with a study of Egyptian intelligentsia during the Nasser era.