Post-Doctoral Fellows: The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace
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 and 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.
DR. NOA LEVY
Noa Levy is a Sophie Davis Post-Doctoral Fellow on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations.
Her Ph.D. 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.
The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace
The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace’s annual activity (2019-2020) was effected by the Covid-19 social distancing protocol. The following report reflects on events that took place, and others that we had to cancel and hope to hold in the coming academic year.
Overall, the forum engaged in four main endeavors:
1. Events on the topic of Gender and Conflict for teaching programs on campus. These events, created by the forum, were designed to invite students to engage with questions on gender and conflict, using their disciplinary framework and knowledge. Our goal is to encourage them to ask such questions within their own disciplines.
• Women Rewriting the Nation: A Comparative Study of Jordanian and Palestinian Feminist Writing (Dec 16). A lecture by Prof. Camelia Suleiman (Michigan State University) in collaboration with the M.A. Program in Conflict Research, Management and Resolution.
• “An Ordinary Life” (Dec 16) A screening of a documentary film about two asylum seekers (in Tel Aviv and in Berlin) with an introduction by The Sophie Davis Forum’s Dr. Noa Levy and followed by a discussion with the film directors and producers Gili Danon and Efrat Shalom Danon. The event was organized in collaboration with the M.A. program in International Development (Glocal).
• An Experts’ Panel on Gender Aspects of Conflicts and Conflict Resolution (Jan 6) organized in collaboration with the International Relations B.A. program (as a special event for the Introduction class).
2. A specialist Master’s course. Weaving Truth(s): Commissions, Victims and Witnesses from Gender and Participatory Perspectives (May 13-18) was supposed to be the anchor for our second semester’s activity, which unfortunately due to Covid-19, did not take place. With a planned delivery by international scholar activist, Dr. Arancha Garcia del Soto and organized as a combination of lectures and workshops, we aimed to offer an particularly exciting and inspiring learning experience, that would invite and allow M.A. students from various disciplines to explore questions related to gender and conflict resolution. In addition to classes, we organized:
• A public lecture: The Role of Women Exiles in Peace Processes, to be followed by a reception, in collaboration with the Swiss Center for Conflict Research, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace.
• A Davis scholars’ seminar on the topic: I Survived, I’m Here, I’m Alive: Breaking the Silence and/as a claim for Dignity and Respect (Paper by Dr. Tal Nitsán, The Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace, discussed by Dr. del Soto).
• A social get-together with the IR Masters’ students, meant to create additional interest and an opportunity for networking.
• A civil society activists’ get-together. This was initiated by activists from the Israel Women’s Network and the Center for Alternative Justice in order to expand scholarly discussion and explore local women’s experiences working in conflict and post-conflict situations.
SPECIAL SCREENING OF THE MOVIE: AN ORDINARY LIFE
December 16, 2019
Women and girls make up about 50% of the refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced populations around the world. The majority of the migratory experiences they face—vulnerabilities, challenges, opportunities—are directly related and particular to the fact that they are women. Can refugee women create for themselves and their families, An Ordinary Life?
The documentary film ‘An Ordinary Life’ provided us with a rare glimpse into the struggles of two women-activists in their attempt to create a better life for themselves, their families, and refugee communities in Tel Aviv and in Berlin. The opening remarks were given by Noa Levy, Sophie Davis Forum on Gender and Conflict Resolution and Peace. The screening was followed by a conversation with the film directors Gili Danon and Efrat Shalom Danon. The Chair was Dr. Tal Nitsan from the Sophie Davis Forum on Gender, Conflict Resolution and Peace.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/359226504
Israel, Germany 2019 | 55 minutes | English, Hebrew, German, Tigrinya | English subtitles