Michal Givoni works in the field of contemporary political theory. Her work explores the history, ethics and politics of humanitarian action; the ethics of witnessing and testimony; cosmopolitanism; innovative technologies of public participation; and future-oriented affects in contemporary politics. Givoni completed her PhD studies at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University (2008) and was a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley (2011). Her first book, The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crisis was published in Cambridge University Press in 2016 and her second book, Future Past: A Theoretical Guide for Living the Impasse was published in Hebrew in 2023.

Books

Michal Givoni, 2023. Future Past: A Theoretical Guide for Living the Impasse. Pardes (Hebrew).

Michal Givoni, 2016. The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crises. Cambridge University Press

Adi Ophir, Michal Givoni and Sari Hanafi (eds.), 2009. The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (New York: Zone Books).

Articles

Michal Givoni, 2021. “Hope on the Move: Israeli Humanitarians Between Resilience and Utopianism,” History & Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2021.195463

Michal Givoni, 2020. “The Nakba in a Livestream: Empathic Encounters and the Solidarity of Shared Precariousness,” International Political Sociology 14(4): 399-417.

Michal Givoni, 2018. “Indifference and Repetition: Occupation Testimonies and Left-Wing Despair,” Cultural Studies 33(4): 595-631.

Michal Givoni, 2017. “Dividing Crowds: In Search of a Worldly Ethics for Cosmopolitan Publics,” Constellations 25(4): 515-528.

Michal Givoni, 2016. “Between Micro Mappers and Missing Maps: Digital Humanitarianism and the Politics of Material Participation in Disaster Response,” Environment & Planning D: Society and Space 34(6): 1025-1043.

Michal Givoni, 2016. “Reluctant Cosmopolitanism: Perceptions Management and the Performance of Humanitarian Principles,” Humanity, Forthcoming.

Michal Givoni, 2016. "Humanitarian Dilemmas, Concern for Others, and Care of the Self". In Johannes Paulmann (ed.), The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press).

Michal Givoni, 2015. “Holocaust Memories and Cosmopolitan Practices: Humanitarian Witnessing between Emergencies and the Catastrophe,” In Haim Hazan and Amos Goldberg (eds.), The Globalization of Holocaust Memory (Berghahn Books).

Michal Givoni, 2014. “The Ethics of Witnessing and the Politics of the Governed,” Theory, Culture & Society 31(1): 123-142.

Michal Givoni, 2012. “Child's Play,” In Ariel Handel (ed.), The Political Lexicon of the Israeli Protest (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Forthcoming) [In Hebrew]

Michal Givoni, 2011. “Humanitarian Governance and Ethical Cultivation: Médecins sans Frontières and the Advent of the Expert-Witness,” Millennium 40(1): 43-63.

Michal Givoni, 2011. “Beyond the Humanitarian/Political Divide: Witnessing and the Making of Humanitarian Ethics,” Journal of Human Rights 10(1).

Michal Givoni, 2010. “Witnessing /Testimony,” Mafte'akh, A Lexical Journal of Political Thought 2.

Michal Givoni, 2009. “Not To Be Governed Thusly: Tracing the Contours of Non-Governmental Politics,” Theory & Criticism 34 [In Hebrew].

Michal Givoni, 2005. "Des victimes pas comme les autres. Réactions israéliennes face a la catastrophe du Biafra". In William Ossipow (ed.) Israël et l’autre. (Labor et Fides).

M.A. Workshop
Contemporary Political Theory
Art and Political Action in the Public Space
Humanitarian Action: Theory and Criticism
Cosmopolitics
Publics and Publicity in a Participatory Age
What Comes after the Human? Posthumanism in theory and practice
The Politics of Hope and Despair