Israel Studies Seminar

Running weekly during Term time, the Israel Studies Seminar is the primary setting for public discussions on a wide spectrum of issues relating to Israeli society, history, politics and culture in the University of Oxford. With an international list of speakers, it has been attracting much attention and a growing audience participation. The seminar is convened by Prof. Yaacov Yadgar, the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, based at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relation. The seminar is hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College. For more details, see the Seminar’s website here: https://www.mes.ox.ac.uk/#/

"A Man Learns Only from What His Heart Desires": Hebrew Textbooks Reimagined
May 29, 2025 – 48:48
"A Man Learns Only from What His Heart Desires": Hebrew Textbooks Reimagined (Transcript)
May 29, 2025 –
Love, Pride, Fear, and Happiness: Zionism as a Case Study for 'National Emotions'
May 15, 2025 – 49:12
Love, Pride, Fear, and Happiness: Zionism as a Case Study for 'National Emotions' (Transcript)
May 15, 2025 –
Israeli Far-Right amid the Erosion of the 'Legitimate Circle of Politics'
May 12, 2025 – 42:22
Israeli Far-Right amid the Erosion of the 'Legitimate Circle of Politics' (Transcript)
May 12, 2025 –
To Be a Jewish State
Mar 5, 2025 – 01:09:33
Trade Networks Bridging Yemen, Israel, and Ethiopia: The Ḥibshūsh Family and Jewish-Muslim Commercial Relations in the 20th Century
Dec 6, 2024 – 01:04:40
Abraham and Moses as Entrepreneurs: Educating for the Future with Narratives of the Past
Nov 22, 2024 – 56:24
Synagogues in Israeli Urban Internal Frontiers as Symbols of Sovereignty
Nov 15, 2024 – 49:54
New & Jew, Zionism and the Quest for National Culture
Nov 6, 2024 – 53:47
Michal Huss - You cannot really live (or die) here: ongoing struggles over cemeteries and housing in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 1957-2020
Oct 30, 2024 – 47:36
Martin Goodman - The Image of Herod in Modern Israel
Oct 23, 2024 – 51:23
Yemima Hadad - Buber and Gandhi on land and resistance: Reading the Buber-Gandhi correspondence after October 7
Oct 21, 2024 – 56:31
Anat Scolnicov - The Israel Supreme Court Religion and the Relationship of State and Religion in Israel
Mar 23, 2023 – 35:15
Amos Morris-Rich - The Fusion of Zionism and Science: The First Two Decades - And the Present Day?
Mar 23, 2023 – 39:12
Neta Schramm - Zionist Neutral? The Sardonic Zionism of Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Ovadia Yosef
Dec 5, 2022 – 40:51
Maya Mark - Menachem Begin’s stand on the imposition of the Military Government, 1948- 1966
Nov 30, 2022 – 40:52
Hillel Cohen - Haters, Love Story: on the relations between Mizrahi Jews and Palestinian Arab’
Nov 21, 2022 – 52:00
Suzanne Schneider - The Divine People? Mapping the political-theological coordinates of post-liberalism
Nov 10, 2022 – 42:47
Gabriel Schwake - Dwelling on the Green Line: Privatize and Rule in Israel/Palestine
Nov 3, 2022 – 56:15
Tilde Rosmer - The Islamic Movement in Israel
Oct 19, 2022 – 41:16
Gideon Katz - The Fear of Judaism in Israeli Culture
May 27, 2022 – 39:05
Nitzan Lebovic: Is Zionism a “Left-Wing Melancholy”?
May 18, 2022 – 48:09
Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman - Hollywood and Israel: A History
May 12, 2022 – 43:35
Haggai Ram - The Social Life of Hashish in Mandatory Palestine and Israel: A Global History
Dec 1, 2021 – 53:50
Amnon Aran - Israeli foreign policy since the end of the Cold War
Nov 18, 2021 – 51:22
Michael Karayanni - Religion and State among the Palestinian-Arabs in Israel: A Multicultural Entrapment
Nov 18, 2021 – 54:00
Eldad Ben Aharon - Supporting Denial: Israel’s Foreign Policy and the Armenian Genocide
Nov 3, 2021 – 46:38
Kathrin Bachleitner - A road towards atonement? Why only West Germany came to “atone” for the Nazi crimes.
Oct 27, 2021 – 43:00
Atalia Omer - Pathways toward a Jewish Israeli Restorative Ethics
Oct 20, 2021 – 52:45
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar: Elana Shapira: Berta Zuckerkandl and Her Circle: Austrian Nationalism and Zionism in Viennese Modernism
Mar 9, 2021 – 01:02:28
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar: Maja Gildin Zuckerman: The Pragmatism of Proto-Zionism: Tracing Jewish Nation-building through a Cultural Sociological Framework
Feb 23, 2021 – 01:18:34
Jamie Stern-Weiner: IHRA: The Politics of a Definition
Feb 16, 2021 – 01:12:06
Anna Prashizky: Connecting Ethnicity and Space: The New Russian-Mizrahi-Mediterranean Pop Culture in Israel’s Periphery
Feb 2, 2021 – 59:09
Adam Sutcliffe: Light Unto the Nations - The Idea of Jewish Purpose and the Emergence of Zionism (Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar)
Jan 27, 2021 – 01:21:53
Tal Shamur (Cambridge): The emergence of melancholic citizenship at the urban periphery: The case of south Tel Aviv protest against global migration
Jan 19, 2021 – 01:07:23
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar: Rose Stair (Oxford): Age and gender in German-language cultural Zionism
Dec 1, 2020 – 01:03:04
Peter Bergamin (Oxford): Guns and Moses: Jewish anti-British Resistance during the Mandate for Palestine
Nov 24, 2020 – 01:07:16
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar: Yuval Evri (KCL) - The Return to Al-Andalus: Disputes Over Sephardic Culture and Identity Between Arabic and Hebrew
Nov 17, 2020 – 01:08:25
Nahshon Perez (Bar-Ilan) and Yuval Jobani (Tel Aviv): Governing the Sacred: Political Toleration in Five Contested Sacred Sites
Nov 10, 2020 – 43:10
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Semina: Danielle Drori (Oxford): Yosef Klausner in Translation: Zionism and Christianity
Nov 3, 2020 – 01:18:54
Reconsidering Early Jewish Nationalist Ideologies Seminar: Yair Wallach, (SOAS): Language of Revival or Conquest? Hebrew in the Streets of early 20th century Jerusalem
Oct 22, 2020 – 01:22:45
Sandy Kedar: Emptied Lands - A Legal Geography of Bedouin Rights in the Negev.
Oct 14, 2020 – 01:23:19
Hizky Shoham - The Emotional Scripting of Boycotts: The Nazi-Zionist Agreement in Jewish Public Culture During the 1930s
Feb 26, 2020 – 41:39
Larissa Remennick - The Israeli Diaspora in Berlin: Back to Being Jewish?
Feb 19, 2020 – 58:17
Lotem Perry-Hazan: Ethnic segregation in the Haredi education in Israel: Policies and practices
Feb 5, 2020 – 01:00:35
Heather Munro: Ashkenazi Hegemony in Haredi Israeli Society and Implications for the Future
Jan 28, 2020 – 36:19
The Making of the Israeli Far Right Book Talk by Peter Bergamin
Jan 22, 2020 – 50:42
Seyed Ali Alavi - Iran and Palestine: Past, Present and Future
Jan 22, 2020 – 47:06