Visiting Faculty
The Schusterman Center will host visiting faculty, who will hold appointments in various departments across the university.
2008-2009
Gannit Ankori, Art History
A visiting professor of Art History at Brandeis in 2008-2009. She also presently serves as the chair of the Department of Art History at Hebrew University. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and a visiting associate professor at Tufts University/ School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has published two books and numerous articles on Frida Kahlo and curated the acclaimed museum exhibition “Frida Kahlo’s Intimate Family Picture” . She has taught and lectured about Israeli and Palestinian art for many years and has published extensively on the visual representation of gender-related issues, the construction of identity, exile, trauma, and hybridity. Her book, Palestinian Art, was published by Reaktion Books, London, in 2006. She won a Polonsky Prize for Originality and Creativity in the Humanistic Disciplines for the work. Her forthcoming English-language book, Frida Kahlo, was originally published in Hebrew in 2003. At Brandeis, she plans to offer two courses: The first focuses on art in Israel, and explores Israeli artists of all ethnic backgrounds, emphasizing the Jewish majority and including Bedouin, Druze, Muslim and Christian artists who are also Israeli. A second course will focus on the Israeli experience and the Arab Israeli component within it. The course will explore the dialogue between Israeli art and the international art world.
Benjamin Gidron, Heller School for Social Policy and Management
Hornstein Professional Jewish Leadership Program
Benjamin Gidron is director of the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research and the School of Management at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He teaches courses on human service organizations, non-profit organizations, and third sector organizations. He has recently won an award for Innovation in Third Sector research from Ben Gurion University. He is the author of many books and articles, including the recent Third Sector in Israel: Between Society and State (2004). Gidron received a BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an MSW from the University of Pittsburg, and a PhD from the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Community Planning.
2009-2010
Maoz Azaryahu, Anthropology
Maoz Azaryahu is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa. He has written extensively on urban landscapes, memory, and society, and has recently published Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City (2006). He was a visiting professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Penn State University, and Lakehead University, Ontario, Canada. He taught at the Summer Institute for Israel Studies.
Dan Ben David, Economics
Dan Ben David is a professor in the department of public policy at Tel Aviv University. He specializes in macroeconomics, economic growth, international economics, and the Israeli economy. He was a recipient of Tel Aviv University’s outstanding teaching award in 2004 and is ranked among Israel’s most influential people in education. Since 1999, he has undertaken to change the Israeli mindset on socio-economic issues. He has written on Israel’s problematic long-run socio-economic trajectories and published Wake Up Call: A Work Plan for a New Era in Israel. He has presented his work before the Knesset, and to Israel’s last three prime ministers.
Yoram Bilu, Anthropology
Yoram Bilu holds a joint appointment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the Sylvia Bauman Professor in the Department of Psychology, and faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. A clinical psychologist turned anthropologist, he is interested in the interface of culture and psychology as reflected in mental health, folk-religion, and altered states of consciousness. He has studied this domain with particular emphasis on Jewish culture and Israeli society. He has been affiliated with the Hebrew University since 1980 and has been a visiting professor at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Western Washington University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is serving currently as the head of the Authority for Doctoral Students at the Hebrew University. Bilu is the co-editor (with Eyal Ben-Ari) of Grasping Land: Space and Place in Contemporary Israeli Discourse and Experience (1997), and the author of Without Bounds: The Life and Death of Rabbi Ya’aqov Wazana (2000). He is the recipient of the Bahat Prize for The Saint Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers, and Holy Men in Israel’s Urban Periphery (Hebrew) (2005).
Postdoctoral Fellows
Mordechai (Motti) Inbari
The Schusterman Center's first postdoctoral fellow, Mordechai (Motti) Inbari, focuses his research on Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. He earned his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and wrote his dissertation on King, Sanhedrin and Temple: Contemporary Movements Seeking to Establish a 'Torah State' and Rebuild the Third Temple 1984-2004. Prior to his fellowship at Brandeis, Inbari served as the Schusterman Visiting Assistant Professor for Israel Studies at the University of Florida. His first book Jewish Fundamentalism and the Temple Mount is forthcoming in Hebrew from the Magnes Press and in English from the State University of New York Press.