Gender Forum
The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace
The issue of the role of gender in the field of violent conflict and transition to peace has received growing attention in recent years, however it is most often addressed in broad academic frameworks such as gender studies or conflict studies. Thanks to a new generous contribution of Mr. Alan Davis, the Leonard Davis institute for International Relations (LDI) is now creating a research forum that will focus more specifically on the various links between gender, conflict and peace studies (for example, the role of women within conflicts and conflict resolution, in peace-making processes, and gender-based approaches to understanding conflicts and conflict resolution).
Exploring gender studies, peace and security is especially salient in the local reality of protracted conflict which offers an abundance of empirical examples of gender-related issues. Such examples include women’s activism in protest movements such as the Four Mothers Movement (which called for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon) or during the recent "Arab Spring”, women's experience in and approach to peace negotiations, the experience of Palestinian women under occupation, questions related to gender and the military and the changing perspectives in Israeli society and institutions regarding military service and gender. At the same time, Israel can benefit from learning about events and processes outside Israel, how gender is affected by protracted conflicts, how it affects conflict resolution, etc.
The new research forum will contribute significantly both to the development of the field of gender, conflict and peace studies in Israel, as well as to the field abroad, through outreach to the larger academic community in North America, Europe, and the Third World, and will link the issue of gender studies to that of international studies. In addition, raising interest in and awareness of such issues may also help empower women in Israel, both within the academic arena and beyond it.
The research forum on Gender, Conflict, and Peace will address both general conceptual gender-conflict related issues as well as cases that are unique to the Israeli and Middle Eastern environment. To promote this broad agenda the Forum plans to provide a post-doctoral fellowship, grants for research groups, organize conferences on related issues and invite prominent scholars from abroad to offer short courses and give public talks on topics related to Gender, Conflict, and Peace.
Women and Armed conflicts
Armed conflicts impact the lived experiences of individuals in diverse and varied ways, in relation to their social locations (gender, class, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, age). While women were always affected by armed conflicts—as worriers and/or family members of warriors, as means to harm the morals and continuity of the rival group, as survivors—through history, women’s wartime experiences were rarely recorded. This series will focus on a range of ways in which armed conflicts, in various geographic locations, impact women’s lived experiences. It aims to help us familiarize ourselves with less discussed wartime experiences, to better understand question of complex victimhood and agency in oppressive and violent circumstances, and mostly to challenge our views regarding ) wars (particular ones and wars in general).
Beyond Victimhood: Inclusive Security and Women’s Role in Stopping Armed Conflicts
A workshop with Ambassador Swanee Hunt
Monday, November 26, 12:30-14:00, Abba Eban Hall
Alfred Davis Building, Mount Scopus Campus
Monday, November 26, 12:30-14:00, Abba Eban Hall
Alfred Davis Building, Mount Scopus Campus
Swanee Hunt is the Eleanor Roosevelt Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Under Dean Joseph Nye, she created and led the school’s Women and Public Policy Program. As President Clinton’s US Ambassador to Austria from 1993–97, she hosted negotiations and international symposia to stabilize the Balkan states and support women leaders throughout Eastern Europe. For two decades she has chaired Inclusive Security, a DC-based NGO, working with thousands of women leaders and policy-makers in more than 60 countries.
| Beyond victimhood.pdf | 772 KB |
Special courses
The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace together with the Department of International Relations will offer each year an expert’s Course (in English, MA level) on gender and conflict resolution.
Details on the left menu.
The Sophie Davis Learning Community
The Sophie Davis Learning Community is meant to bring together scholars and activists looking into questions of gender, conflict resolution and peace from diverse disciplines and perspectives. We aim to create a scholarly community that will develop various creative and innovative collaborations around these themes. The community will meet once a month to discuss a specific concept. Each meeting will feature three to five short presentations (10-15 min) and then open the stage for Q&A, followed by general discussion about the concept, its place and meaning in our research, activism, and lived experiences.
Please note: All meetings will be audio/video recorded and, unless otherwise advertised, take place in Hebrew.
Current Post- Doctoral Fellows
Dr. Tal Nitsán (2016-2018)
Dr. Tal Nitsán is a feminist scholar critically examining socio-cultural global and local perspectives of the intersections between gender, violence, and law & society. Her interdisciplinary projects navigate between three main research sites: Israel/Palestine, Guatemala, and North America. She currently holds the Sophie Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace at the Davis Institute for International Relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research on transnational women’s human rights discourse in theory and practice offers a comparative perspective on the role of dignity and diversity in promoting social justice in Guatemala and Israel. Dr. Nitsán taught several undergraduate courses on gender and socio-legal issues in both the Anthropology and the Sociology Departments at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and has been actively implementing insights from her fieldwork with the Guatemalan movement to end violence against women into campus-based activism on gendered violence. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at UBC where she was a Liu Institute Scholar. Her PhD was supported by multiple fellowships and research grants and one of her dissertation chapters was awarded the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (The Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas School of Law). She holds an MA in Anthropology and Sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a Truman Institute fellow. Her MA was supported by multiple fellowships and research grants and received The Shaine Center for Research in the Social Sciences Master’s thesis award as well as The Israeli Sociological Society's Master’s Thesis Recognition Award. She volunteered at the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center, was a member of the UBC Advisory Committee on Sexual Assault Awareness, and serves on the American Anthropology Association’s Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology (CoGEA).
Noa Levy (2019-2020)
Noa Levy is a Sophie Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations. Her PhD thesis on unaccompanied child and youth migration focused on regional mobility from Zimbabwe to the South African borderland, and investigated conceptualizations of childhood, youth and migration. She is currently working on emerging femininities and masculinities among unaccompanied migrating youth. Noa is teaching at the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies at Tel Hai Academic College.
Former Post- Doctoral Fellows
Dr. Merav Amir (2012-13)
Dr. Merav Amir is a cultural and political geographer with particular interest in critical perspectives on security, processes of border making, geographies of embodiment, critical cultural analysis and feminist and queer theory. Dr. Amir is a lecturer at the School of Natural and Built Environment and serve as a Senior Research Fellow, The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice, Queen's University, Belfast. Her research examined the use of border making technologies in the Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territory. In addition, she also research political activism and the securitization of public spaces. Prior research projects included analysis of modes of embodiment and the political and social implications of the new reproductive technologies.
Dr. Tamir Magal (2013-14)
Tamir Magal holds PhD in Political Science form Haifa University. His dissertation examined how changes in political context and differences in organizational characteristics affected the capacity of Israeli peace organizations to mobilize different types of resources. His wider research interests include intractable conflicts, peacemaking and conflict resolution processes, and the role of civil society organizations in such processes.
During the 2013-14 post doctoral period at the Davis Institute, His research examined the relationship between gender identity and the promotion of specific visions by peace organizations. The study compared between disparate gender-specific organizations (women and ex-combatants), in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Exploring the type of "vision of peace" they espoused, the types of strategies they utilized in promoting this vision, and the type of mobilization they employed.
Dr. Sarai Aharoni (2013-15)
Dr. Sarai Aharoni is a lecturer in Gender studies at Ben-Gurion University. She received her Ph.D. in Gender Studies from Bar-Ilan University, writing her dissertation on gender perspectives and the participation of Israeli women in formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. She has published articles on gender, peace and conflict in Israel and co-edited the book Where Are All the Women? U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325: Gender Perspectives of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict(2004). Dr. Aharoni is one of the founding members of the IWC (International Women’s Commission) and has been active in promoting women’s rights in Israel as a member of Isha l’Isha-Haifa Feminist Center.
Dr. Timea Spitka (2014-16)
Dr. Timea Spitka received her PhD from Ben Gurion University with a focus on intervention in violent conflicts and her MA from University of Toronto in Russian and East European Studies. Her research has focused on conflict resolution, international mediation, group identity, gender and intervention in violent conflicts. Her book, International Intervention, Identity and Conflict Transformation: Bridges and Walls between Groups will be published by Routledge in 2015. Dr. Spitka has taught classes in International Mediation, Conflict Resolution and American Foreign Policy. She has also worked for several international organizations including for the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a Gender Advisor for Oxfam and a journalist. As the Sophie Davis Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Spitka is the coordinator of the Forum on Gender, International Conflict Resolution and Peace.
Dr. Einat Gedalya-Lavy (2015-17)
Einat Gedalya-Lavy is a past Sophie Davis Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace at the Davis Institute for International Relations, Hebrew University. Her PhD work at the Political Science Department in Tel-Aviv University examined the relationships between feminism, media framing of women and politics and the gender gap in voting in Israel over time. Her current study focuses on a comparative analysis of attitudes and values of women and men toward peace and security issues.
Gedalya-Lavy is a recipient of several academic awards and scholarships, including: the Na'amat doctoral research grant and the Tami Steinmetz research grant together with Prof. Herzog regarding women's voices on issues of peace and security. She has been an active member of the "Gender Gap in Voting" research group at "Shavot" center for the advancement of women in the public sphere at Van-Leer Institute in Jerusalem. She was a research fellow at the Harold Hartog School of Government and Policy (Goldman Junior fellowship). Her research interests include: Gender and Politics; Gender, Peace and Security; Political Communication; Elections Studies; Political Psychology, and Political Methodology.
Dr. Rawia Aburabia (2017-18)
Attorney Rawia Aburabia completed her PhD dissertation "Personal Status Laws of Palestinian Bedouin Women: Colonized by the Law" at the faculty of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a research fellow at joint interdisciplinary doctoral program "Human Rights under Pressure – Ethics, Law, and Politics” Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her PhD project dealt with the regulation of the criminal prohibition of polygamy among the Bedouin by the Israeli legal system, with special focus on the lack of enforcement policy as a colonial legacy and its effects on the legal status of Bedouin women. Rawia holds BA degrees in law and social work, and an LL.M. from Washington College of Law at American University as the New Israel Fund fellow for Civil Liberties Lawyers.
Attorney Aburabia was part of the Arab Minority legal Department in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. She specialized in Human Rights violations of the Arab Bedouin minority, and litigated cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. Ms. Aburabia has been at the forefront of several civil rights initiatives, concerning the unrecognized Bedouin villages and Bedouin women’s rights in Israel.
Rawia received several awards for her academic and feminist work such as the Ariane de Rothschild Women Doctoral Program Fellowship for excellent doctoral students, NA'AMAT award for the advancement of gender equality and gender studies. In 2006 she received the Abraham Fund Initiatives Social Activist Award for promoting Coexistence in Israel. In 2011 was Selected by 972 + Person of the Year: Woman Activists of the Arab World. And in 2014 was Selected by Haaretz 66 list of Women you should know.
Coordinator and principal researcher
Dr. Tal Nitsán
Dr. Tal Nitsán is a feminist scholar critically examining socio-cultural global and local perspectives of the intersections between gender, violence, and law & society. Her interdisciplinary projects navigate between three main research sites: Israel/Palestine, Guatemala, and North America. She currently holds the Sophie Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace at the Davis Institute for International Relations, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research on transnational women’s human rights discourse in theory and practice offers a comparative perspective on the role of dignity and diversity in promoting social justice in Guatemala and Israel. Dr. Nitsán taught several undergraduate courses on gender and socio-legal issues in both the Anthropology and the Sociology Departments at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and has been actively implementing insights from her fieldwork with the Guatemalan movement to end violence against women into campus-based activism on gendered violence. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at UBC where she was a Liu Institute Scholar. Her PhD was supported by multiple fellowships and research grants and one of her dissertation chapters was awarded the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights (The Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, University of Texas School of Law). She holds an MA in Anthropology and Sociology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a Truman Institute fellow. Her MA was supported by multiple fellowships and research grants and received The Shaine Center for Research in the Social Sciences Master’s thesis award as well as The Israeli Sociological Society's Master’s Thesis Recognition Award. She volunteered at the Jerusalem Rape Crisis Center, was a member of the UBC Advisory Committee on Sexual Assault Awareness, and serves on the American Anthropology Association’s Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology (CoGEA).