The Department of Middle East Studies Faculty staff

Name	Research & Teaching Areas	Email
Prof. Muhammad Al-Atawneh	Modern-day Islam; religion and state in the Muslim and Arab world; Sharia; politics and government in contemporary Muslim thought and practice	alatawnh@bgu.ac.il
Dr. Jonathan Brack	Medieval-early modern Persianate world and the Mongol Empire; inter-religious exchanges and polemics (Islam, Buddhism, Judaism) and religious minorities; sacred kingship; theory of religion and Islamization and conversion.	brackjon@bgu.ac.il
Dr. Leonardo Cohen Shabot	Ethiopian and African history from the 17th century until today
Dr. Aviv Deri	Social and economic history of the Middle East with emphasis on Syria and the Ottoman empire in the nineteenth century.	aviv.derri@nyu.edu
Prof. Yair Horesh	Modern Arabic literature	yairhuri@bgu.ac.il
Prof. Nimrod Hurvitz	Islamic movements in the Middle Ages and the modern period; Sharia; Islamic political-legal thought; the theology of politics	nhurvitz@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
Prof. Yoram Meital	Political, cultural, and legal history of the modern Middle East; Egyptian and Palestinian society; the Jewish community in Egypt; synagogues as cultural texts	ymeital@bgu.ac.il
Dr. Yonatan Mendel	Language-society interactions and the sociology of language; the Arabic language and the place of Arabic in Israel; the politics of translation; Israeli-Arab relations through the lens of language; contemporary Arabic literature	mendely@bgu.ac.il
Prof. Haggai Ram	Middle Eastern politics and culture in the modern period; history of the British Mandate and the State of Israel; Iran; imperialism and colonialism in the Middle East; history of drug use and trafficking in the Middle East	hram@bgu.ac.il
Prof. Avi Rubin	History of the Ottoman Empire; history of law in the Middle East; the rule of law in the modern Middle East	avirubin@bgu.ac.il
Prof. Relli Shechter - Department Chair	Socio-economic history and political economy of the Middle East; history of business and consumerism in the Middle East; Egypt and Saudi Arabia	rellish@bgu.ac.il
Prof. Daniella Talmon-Heller	Religion and society in the Muslim world; Judaism and Islam from a comparative perspective; social and cultural history; historiography	talmond@bgu.ac.il
Dr. Orit Vaknin-Yakutieli	Modern Morocco; Moroccan history, culture, and society; Moroccan and North African Jews; history of the Moroccan Diaspora in Israel; colonialism and post-Colonialism; Vichy period in Morocco	oritye@gmail.com