Post-Doctoral Fellows: The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace
DR. RAWIA ABURABIA
Attorney Rawia Aburabia completed her PhD dissertation on “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 the joint interdisciplinary doctoral program, “Human Rights under Pressure – Ethics, Law, and Politics”
at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Her PhD project dealt with the Israeli legal system’s regulation of the criminal prohibition of polygamy among the Bedouin, with special focus on the policy of non-enforcement as a colonial legacy and its effects on the legal status of Bedouin women.
DR. TAL NITSAN
Dr. Tal Nitsán is a feminist scholar critically examining socio-cultural, global and local perspectives on the intersections between gender, violence, and law & society. Her interdisciplinary projects navigate between three main research sites: Israel/Palestine, Guatemala, and North America. 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.
The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace
Gender and conflicts, narrowly and broadly defined, are central organizing principles of the human condition and constitute each other. However, most often they are addressed in broad academic frameworks such as gender studies or conflict studies. The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace, established in 2011 with the generous contribution of Mr. Alan Davis, focuses directly on the various links between gender, conflict and peace. As a unit within the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations, and physically located in a reality of a protracted, multilayer conflict, the forum is well situated to explore empirical examples of how gender and conflicts constitute each other while intersecting with aspects of ethnicity, nationality, religion, class, sexuality and body ableness. This broad exploration aims to enhance our understanding of conflicts and thus promote insightful and long-lasting conflict resolution processes.
In the 2017-2018 academic year the forum engaged in two main modes of operation. First, it edited a special volume of the journal Politika, on the topic of Gender and Conflict, to be published in fall 2018. The issue is composed of 12 peer- reviewed, original articles.. Second, a monthly lecture series was held, focusing on agency related concepts and how they can generate changes in a conflicted reality. Each event was organized around several (2-7) short lectures delivered by leading scholars and activists and followed by a discussion. The seven concepts discussed this year were: Hope, Belonging, Esthetics, Kavod (honor, dignity, respect) and Vulnerability, Movement, Diversity, and Continuity. The events’ impact reaches beyond the actual attendees and the forum was invited to organize and deliver the closing panel for the Israeli Gender tudies Conference (February 2018). The forum maintains close collaboration with several research units on campus (Gender Studies, The Center for the Study of Multiculturalism and Diversity, The Urban Clinic), and external research units such as Isha Leisha (Feminist Research Center, Haifa), Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, as well as the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University.
THE SOPHIE DAVIS LEARNING COMMUNITY
The Sophie Davis Learning Community brings 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 meets once a month to discuss a specific concept. Each meeting features three to five short presentations (10-15 min) and then opens the stage for Q&A, followed by general discussion about the concept, its place and meaning in our research, activism, and lived experiences.
November 15, 2017 Hope, Gender and Conflict Resolution
December 13, 2017 Belonging, Gender and Conflict Resolution
January 10, 2018 Aesthetics, Gender and Conflict Resolution
February 14, 2018 Gender, Conflict and Vagina Monologues
March 21, 2018 Movement, Gender and Conflict Resolution
April 11, 2018 Diversity, Gender and Conflict Resolution
May 9, 2018 Continuity, Gender and Conflict Resolution