Research Fellows
2013-2014
Research Fellows
Professor Sufen Sophia Lai is Professor of English at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, USA, where she teaches world mythology, scriptures as literature and East Asian civilization. She received her Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and she enjoys doing research in the areas of comparative mythology and East-West literary relations. Her recent articles include a literary biography of Guo Pu (276-324) in Classical Chinese Writers of the Pre-Tang Period (Gale, 2010) and "Racial Discourse and Utopian Visions in Nineteenth-Century China" in Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Western and Eastern Constructions (Brill, 2013). She appreciates the opportunity to spend her sabbatical year at the S. Daniel Abraham Center to work on her research projects and wish to establish contacts with scholars in the field of Biblical Studies in Israel. She loves learning languages (currently studying Hebrew) and long-distance cycling.
Prof. Yoram Peri is the Abraham S. and Jack Kay Chair in Israel Studies, and Director of the new Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies, the University of Maryland at College Park, USA.
A former political advisrr to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Prof. Peri was founder and former head of the Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society; professor of Political Sociology and Communication in the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University; and former editor-in-chief of the Israeli daily, Davar.
Born in Jerusalem, he earned his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and has held numerous prestigious positions at universities and academic institutions in Israel and the US. Among his various public positions, Prof. Peri was president of the Association of Editors of Israel's Daily Newspapers and a member of the Press Council. Since 2011 he is also the editor of Israel Studies Review, the flagship academic journal of the Association for Israel Studies (AIS).
Among his books are Generals in the Cabinet Room; The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin; Between Battles and Ballots: Israel Military in Politics; and Telepopulism: Media and Politics in Israel. His book (in Hebrew) Brothers at War: Rabin's Assassination and the Cultural War in Israel was granted the 2006 award by the Presidents and Prime Ministers Memorial Council, and his latest book, Generals in the Cabinet Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy, has been selected as an outstanding book and as "one of the best of the best" by the Association of American University Presses, in 2007.
Cielo R. Zaidenwerg received her Ph.D. in Latin-American History from the University of Barcelona in June 2013. Her dissertation is entitled "The Argentinization of the National Territories through formal and informal education. Case study: Río Negro (1908-1930)". Her primary research interests in Argentine Studies are: the construction and consolidation of the National State; the specific particularities of the Patagonic region; exploring nationalism, identity and cultural imaginary. For the past five years she has been researching, teaching, and organizing and attending conferences and seminars at the University of Barcelona. Of her many articles published, two of her most recent appeared in 2013: "To love, honour and serve their country. The schools of Río Negro and their contribution to the argentinization of the south (1908-1930)" at Páginas. National University of Rosario (UNR) / CONICET (Argentina); and "A patriotic project for National Territories. Education and ephemeris in the Argentinean Patagonia and Rio Negro during the first decades of the twentieth century" at Unisinios. Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Brazil). At the moment Dr. Zaidenwerg is immersed in a post-doc research project, investigating the images that other nations had about the Patagonian region throughout the twentieth century. Some of the countries she wants to include are Spain, USA and UK. This topic is ground breaking research because it's a field that has been hardly addressed either in Argentine historiography or international historiography. Since her main interest lies in cultural ideas of the times, her historical sources are mainly press articles and photographs.
Junior Fellows:
Jacob Hutt
Jacob Hutt is a Fulbright Research Scholar focusing on strengths and weaknesses of the Law of Return with regards to immigration from developing nations, using the growing Cuban Jewish expatriate population as a case study. This project is an expansion of his recently completed undergraduate thesis at Harvard University, entitled "Rising Civil Society, Falling Egalitarianism: The Jewish Association in Post-Totalitarian Cuba," which examined the Cuban Jewish community and its special opportunities for emigration from Cuba. He will conduct his research at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Professor Raanan Rein. Jacob graduated from Harvard College with a B.A. magna cum laude in Social Studies in 2013.
María Tardín is a PhD candidate in the field of Political Science and International Relations. She belongs to Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, and her thesis topic is "The non-solution of the Middle East Conflict: Actors and Factors involved". The objective of her research is to find the key aspects that have contributed to the failure of the peace process, as it has been conceived since Oslo, to establish the basis of this paradigm, and to try to shape new ones, emphasizing the role of the UE and, especially, the role of Spain. María has worked before on Israel Foreign Policy and on the problem of water scarcity in the Middle East; she has also collaborated with the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the Middle East Relations Department.
Ari Varon is currently a Ph.D. student in Political Science co advised from two institutions: the University of Sciences Po located in Paris France as well as at Tel Aviv University in Israel. His Dissertation focuses on the formation of an Islamic political identity in contemporary Europe. Ari served as the Deputy Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel from April 2005 through April 2009. His responsibilities included assisting to prepare the Prime Minister for all matters relating to Israeli foreign policy. Before working at the Prime Minister's office Ari received his Masters degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS in Washington DC with a dual concentration in strategic studies and international law and a specialization in quantitative international economics. In conjunction with his studies in Washington he worked part time at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He obtained his Bachelors degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.
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