Professor Yaacov Yadgar appointed as Stanley Lewis Chair of Israel Studies

The School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations are delighted to welcome Yaacov Yadgar as the Stanley Lewis Chair of Israel Studies.  Professor Yadgar, who is currently teaching politics at Bar-Ilan University, will be joining the university on 1 August 2017 and will be a fellow of St Anne’s.

Yaacov Yadgar's research revolves around issues of Jewish identity, religion, politics, and secularism. Yadgar's scholarship is multidisciplinary, encompassing Jewish, political, cultural, religious, and media studies. He focuses on placing Israel in theoretical and epistemological frameworks that bear obvious relevance beyond the specific case history. Yadgar’s most recent book, Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism (SUNY Press, 2017) deals with the charged nature of the interaction between the nation-state’s political theology and what modern Western political thought commonly marks as apolitical “religion.” Yadgar’s current research extends this work to consider the implications of Israel’s unique Jewish self-identification to the wider politics of the Middle East.
 
Yadgar’s vision for the Stanley Lewis Chair is to refocus the scope of the field to encompass more than the nation-state or “the conflict” by integrating the cultural and historical pluralities of Israeli society.