I graduated from Johns Hopkins University (Political Science) in 2001 and joined the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Ben-Gurion University in 2002. Currently, I am an associate professor and serve as the department’s chairperson.
My first book Global Liberalism, Local Populism: peace and conflict in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland (Syracuse University Press, 2006) engages with the dynamics of the conflicts in the two regions and the impact of economic changes on them. The book is the winner of the Czempiel Prize, Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, (2008). My second book, Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Modern Israel, (Cambridge University Press, 2013) examines questions of religion and state in Israel. The book is the Winner of the Shapiro Best Book Award, Israel Studies Association (2014), and the Israeli Political Science Association Best Book Award (2014). In addition, I edited and co-wrote several books and published more than 30 articles. My recent research engages with questions of policing and particularly with relations of police forces and minorities. I conducted research in Canada, the United States and currently, a large research on Israeli police. The next stage in this research will be a comparative work on police forces in mixed cities and post-conflict states, examining the dilemmas that police forces contend with and the potential of reforms.