Prof. Yoram Meital of the Department of Middle East Studies and Chairperson of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy has been awarded the first University of Massachusetts Lowell Medal for Intercultural Understanding for “his extensive work in the area of peace and conflict studies and his continued efforts to promote understanding and creative thinking in the context of the potential transition to democracy in the Middle East”.
Meital obtained his PhD in Middle East Studies from Haifa University and did his Post-Doctoral studies in Oxford University as a Senior Associate Member at St. Antony's College. In addition to his position as an Associate Professor in Middle East Studies at BGU, Professor Meital was a Fellow in the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard University Law School (2011-2012); a distinguished Visiting Professor at Northeastern University in Boston (2003-2004), and the Greenberg Middle East Scholar-in-Residence Program, Skidmore College (2008).
His primary research emphasis is politics, culture and nationalism in the Middle East (with special emphasis on Egypt). His current research focuses on the making of hegemony and resistance in Egypt since the 1950’s – focusing on political trails and imprisonment. This study is based on detailed research into the exceptional courts, where hundreds of the regime’s opponents (mainly members of the Muslim Brothers movement) were prosecuted, and the prisons, where they were incarcerated as political prisoners.
He has published extensively on various aspects of the Israeli-Arab conflict, with a stress on the relations between Israel, Egypt, and Palestine and continues his longue durée research project about Egyptian Jewry, particularly the documentation of communal sites.
