Dr Noa Schonmann awarded OUP John Fell fund grant

Congratulations to Noa Schonmann, who has been awarded a grant from Oxford Universitys John Fell OUP Research Fund.

The funding will support a project entitled:Beyond Rejectionism? A Historical-Sociological Inquiry into Arab States Strategy towards the Israel Problem.

Is rejectionism still considered a viable strategic solution to the Israel Problem or has this deeply entrenched notion been relinquished? How can we adequately ground claims about the nature of purported structural transformations in the collective strategy of the Arab states?

The stakes in this debate are high for all those involved in the Arab-Israeli conflictcitizens, policymakers, and scholarsof the region and outside it. Rigorous answers to these questions depend on our ability to comprehend multi-actor long-term path-dependent processes of structural change and shifting patterns of strategic action. The proposed pilot-study of one potentially transformative event-segment in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, specifically the episode of the Three Nos resolution, will enable me to apply and assess the appropriate historical-sociological tools, and effectively build the case for a larger scale research project with more ambitious outcomes and dissemination strategy.

The project builds on Sewells methodological framework, which argues for a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods as means of constructing an interpretivist historical account of path-dependant structural change in the social realm, one that is constituted in a dialectic between semiotic practices of contemporary actors (linguistic, as well as iconic, spatial, ritual, technical, institutional) and their material environments (geographic, economic, military).

The project will run from 1 October 2013 until 31 September 2015.