The Davis Institute for International Relations is a research institute, and as such it distributes research grants, scholarships and prizes to promote research in the field of international studies.
The Academic Committee of The Davis Institute makes decisions regarding the distribution of scholarships and grants.
On this page, you can read about the research groups and research programs that operate at the institute.
Dr. Amit Sheniak, Dr. Daniel Sobelman, Dr. Yehonatan Abramson
Governments around the world—whether in Western democratic countries or otherwise—are today coming to grips with the manner in which cyber-attacks are impacting their national security and vital interests. Cyber-related abilities are associated with a number of core security issues, including in areas of direct relevance to the conflict in the Middle East and the research agendas surrounding it. These include such topics as the competition for regional dominance and hegemony, and the stability of local autocratic regimes. However, cyber-conflicts in the Middle East have yet to receive proper attention in the social sciences. To date, no substantial academic attempts have been made to analyze the normative dimensions, the local discourses or the motivations of the primary Middle Eastern actors in the cyber domain. Moreover, no academic or scientific database currently exists, which records the policy decisions, laws, statements and actions that were made in the Middle East with respect to the cyber domain. Similarly absent are any studies of local statements, interviews and publications regarding cyber conflicts in the Middle East. Whatever research does exist tends to analyze the regional cyber conflict from a Western perspective.
Against this background, in May 2018, we established a research group whose aim is to explore the effects that cyber conflicts and cyber weapons have had on the forging of national security policy and politics in the Middle East. The group seeks to highlight the different effects of cyber conflicts in various regional settings. The researchers in the group bring to the table a range of relevant expertise, from cyber-attacks and the effect of cybersecurity on national security policy in general, to experts of different Middle-Eastern test-cases equipped with the necessary local language proficiencies (Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and Turkish).
The group’s overarching goal is to establish a database, comprised of qualitative analyses with the capacity to identify trends that would add to the emerging study of cyber-conflicts in general, and shed light on cyber-conflicts in the Middle East, including their regional and international ramifications. We believe that the study of cyber-conflicts holds the potential to improve our understanding of recent regional instability and its implications for deterrence, national coercion abilities, international involvement and security regimes. This database would enable us to narrow the gap between the existing research on cyber-security and the academic research on the regional implications of cyber-conflicts in the Middle East.
Dr. Christian Thauer; Noa Swisa (MA) – PhD research student, DAAD Center for German Studies; Griffin Elbron (BA) MA student at DAAD Center for German Studies
The research group has focused on two particular goals this year. The first one concerns substance: the group conducted intensive research mapping of the institutional infrastructure between Germany and Israel, which allows firms and public policies to generate innovation complementarities. By innovation complementarities, the group understands different capabilities which concern the development of new traits (innovations: new ideas, technologies and products), manifested in institutional forms and environments of countries (Israel and Germany, respectively) that, in the context of each other (i.e., when interdependent), increase their value creating potential (i.e. generate increasing returns). Innovation complementarities may motivate international trade and foreign direct investment. For example, through investments and trade across institutional contexts – in our case, Israel and Germany –firms synchronize different innovation capabilities with each other and therewith increase their organizational value creating capacities. The questions we asked were accordingly: what institutional infrastructure exists between the two countries specifically dedicated to facilitating such complementarities? What institutional pathways could firms pursue if seeking to realize innovation complementarities? And what are the main obstacles on the way? Examples of such institutional infrastructure include the German-Israeli Chamber of Commerce activities to connect German firms to the Israeli startup market or similar programs from the Israeli Innovation Authority or Startup Nation Central. Addressing these questions, we managed to achieve a comprehensive mapping of this infrastructure through a.) secondary research; b.) interviews with German-Israeli, German, and Israeli public policy institutions; c.) firms that operate between Germany and Israel. The second goal was to contact potential external funding agencies for a larger follow-up project and begin writing a funding proposal. We also progressed with respect to this specific goal. In January, PI Christian Thauer traveled to Guetersloh where he had a day-long meeting with the Israel desk of the Bertelsmann Foundation about future projects. 0n July 1st the group submitted a pre-project proposal to the Bertelsmann Foundation to work with the Foundation on a call for proposals for such a follow-up project.
Dr. Daniel Wajner, Dr. Roee Kibrik and Dr. Aviad Rubin
The research and policy group "Israel in the Mediterranean Basin" is a project established by the Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University, the Mitvim Institute and the National Security Institute at the University of Haifa. The directors of the group are Dr. Roee Kibrik, on behalf of Mitvim, Dr. Aviad Rubin, on behalf of Haifa University, and Dr. Daniel Wajner, on behalf of the Davis Institute. Within the thirty participants are leading researchers in the field, former MKs, former Ambassadors and officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, trade union officials, among others.
The group's rational lies in the current development of political, economic, security and social processes in the Mediterranean basin, which have drawn increasing attention from regional powers and states. The political, economic and social developments in the Mediterranean are ongoing and constantly evolving, and new economic opportunities and geopolitical developments are contributing to this trend and are turning the region into a central tenet of Israel’s foreign policy. Together with regional alliances and bilateral relations that Israel is advancing in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Israeli public has also begun to perceive the area as a new space for regional belonging. The region’s consolidation offers many opportunities and challenges for Israel and is accompanied by both cooperation and struggles over the region’s desired characteristics, the regional institutions that should be established, common values, geographic boundaries, and each member state’s role and political power.
To assess possible developments, identify opportunities and challenges, and thus discover the necessary political actions, it is first necessary to understand the arena and identify trends, processes, different issues at stake, and active players and their various interests. To this end, this group attempts to better understand the Mediterranean arena and Israel’s place therein, to formulate guidelines and policy recommendations, and to promote political dialogue with various regional actors. More specifically, we focused on geo-political processes in the Mediterranean basin (changing relations between the countries of the region and the involvement of international powers in it); Israel's foreign policy towards the Mediterranean; the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the reality in Gaza on the Mediterranean; how Mediterranean countries can help one another in promoting conflict resolution; the institutionalization of regional relations; as well as common opportunities and challenges in the area of democracy, energy, refugees, law, regulation and the environment.
Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Dr. Shaul Shenhav, Mr. Yair Fogel-Dror, Ms. Vered Porzycki
The project aims to deliver post factum and real-time insights and analysis on the main trends of media coverage regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict and political dialogues. Special attention is given to international interventions in the conflict. Data is collected using a monitoring system that tracks media coverage from news websites in English all over the world, and will be made available for researchers, students, decision makers, journalists and the general public through an open-access website. In the last year, we have further developed and validated our computational methods for analyzing the news data. We have conducted several tests for potential categories and established potential measures to gauge media coverage regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Among our categories are general ones, such as the use of violence in the conflict, Israel and the Arab world; in addition to specific categories such as Palestinians’ organizations, the BDS movement and interventions of specific governments or international institutions. Our goal is to aggregate these measures into the “Davis index,” as a general measure for international intervention in the Israel-Palestine conflict. We have designed our system in a way that allows for periodic assessments in which we shall try to adapt our measures for specific requests by researchers. Our first meeting is planned for the summer and includes a researchers’ workshop followed by further development of discourse categories. Our method was presented at international conferences in the fields of Political Science and Communications. As detailed in our 2017 report, we have completed the necessary infrastructure for the collection of data on a massive scale, from a large number of sources – starting from 2014 to date. We have also started working on potential interfaces between our system and other infrastructures, both in order to expand the analysis with additional measures (e.g., events, geo-location) and also due to the significant maintenance costs of a long-term, fully functioning monitoring system.
Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Prof. Shaul Shenhav, Ms. Vered Porzycki, Mr. Dror Markus and Mr. Guy Mor
The “Davis index” aims to represent international media attention on the Israeli-Arab conflict and relations, focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The index aggregates a list of general categories, such as "Middle East Conflicts" and "Israel and the Arab world"; as well as specific categories, such as "Palestinian organizations", "the BDS movement", and interventions by specific governments or international institutions. The method incorporates topic models for its unsupervised component and deep learning for its supervised component. Both stages take the context into account, while focusing on the sentence as the desired unit of analysis. The result is a multi-label text classification method - attributing multiple topics to each sentence.
The Davis Indek website: https://hujilab.shinyapps.io/davis/
Dr. Lior Herman
The Geopolitics and Energy Research Group (GERG) mission is to promote and advance research on the interrelations between energy, politics and geopolitics in various directions and from a multidisciplinary perspective. Led by Dr. Lior Herman, GERG brings together scholars at different stages of their academic careers and from several disciplines, ranging from international relations and geography to communication studies and conflict resolution research. GERG provides a platform for discussion, research, and analysis to advance energy geopolitics studies and acts as a conduit for developing research grants promoting further research. It serves as a forum facilitating a professional network among Israeli and international scholars and professionals working in this field. The group conducted extensive research activities, published academic articles, engaged in international research collaborations, and provided pro-bono advice to the Israel 100 initiatives during the past year.
Leonard Davis Institute and Mitvim Institute formed a new research group that focuses on the potential role, and contribution, of various actors to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and peacebuilding. The project combines theory and practice, research and policy, and wishes to draw lessons from the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as well as peace processes in other conflict areas. At the beginning of the project, we published a call for papers and selected a group of 12 scholars from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. The proposed studies analyzes the role of actors such as religious leaders, women, businesses, prisoners, and environmental organizations. In the first stage, during May-June 2021, the group held two study sessions: In the first meeting we discussed the theoretical framework of the project, and in the second meeting we heard from guest speakers who were involved in the practice of peacemaking. The group members submitted drafts of the papers at the end of August and after a process of review and revision, the final papers will be published in Hebrew and English starting in October 2021. During the first semester of next year (October 2021-January 2022) we will organize a series of round tables in which the papers will be presented and we will also invite experts and practitioners to take part in the discussions. Some of the papers of the project will be selected to become academic articles for a special issue of the journal Politika.