בתר דוקטור
Post-Doctoral Fellows since 2020
Dr. Assaf Rotman (2021-2022)
Dr. Assaf Rotman received his PhD in Sociology from Tel Aviv University. His research interests span different forms of income and educational inequalities, social movements, and distributive justice. Dr. Assaf Rotman was a post-doctoral researcher in the ERC project “Structural vs. Individual Aspects of Gender Inequality” led by Prof. Hadas Mandel at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Dr. Aliza Forman-Rabinovici (2020-2021, 2021-2022)
Dr. Forman-Rabinovici received her PhD in Political Science from Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on gender, representation, and public policy in a comparative perspective, and uses quantitative methodology. Her doctorate explored determinants of abortion policy in a comparative perspective. She was a post-doctoral researcher in the ERC project “Structural vs. Individual Aspects of Gender Inequality” led by Prof. Hadas Mandel at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Dr. Areen Hawari (2022-2023)
Dr. Areen Hawari holds a PhD in Gender Studies from Ben-Gurion University. Her research focuses on the activism of Palestinian women: between feminism, religion, and the state. She was a postdoctoral fellow and grant recipient of the Yonathan Shapiro Foundation at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Dr. Maayan Roichman (2022-2023, 2023-2024)
Dr. Roichman holds a doctoral degree in Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Dr. Roichman is interested in cultural production and its intersections with politics, ethics, and subjectivity. Her research focuses on the subjective processes involved in creating cultural artefacts such as media and technology. She has been an Azrieli Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a Postdoctoral Affiliate at the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tel Aviv University (IWiT Lab).
Her postdoctoral research project investigated how culture shapes the development of conversational AI, with a particular focus on the perspectives of those involved in its construction. Her research sheds light on the views of developers regarding language, authenticity, and the future, and how these views are influenced by cultural contexts.
Dr. Christian Czymara (2022-2023, 2023-2024)
Dr. Christian Czymara is a social scientist specializing in quantitative methods in social research. He received his PhD from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, Germany. In 2022, he was awarded the Excellence Fellowship Program for International Postdoctoral Researchers by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Council for Higher Education.
During his postdoctoral research, at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, hosted by Prof. Anastasia Gorodzeisky, Dr. Czymara studied the social consequences of exogenous events, such as terrorist attacks, using both secondary survey data and self-collected social media data. He also collaborated with Prof. Gorodzeisky on research examining the social meanings of migration-related measures and with Prof. Noah Lewin-Epstein and Prof. Moshe Semyonov on a project on migration (relocation) within Germany.
Dr. Maha Natoor (2023-2024)
Dr. Maha Natoor received her PhD in 2021 from the University of Haifa, Faculty of Education. Her research explored the Druze belief in reincarnation in Israel, focusing on the Notq phenomenon: the remembering and talking about the previous incarnation. She examined both psychological and social aspects of this phenomenon. In addition to her academic pursuits, Dr. Natoor works as a pediatric occupational therapist, where her clinical work and academic research complement and enrich each other.
Dr. Natoor was a postdoctoral fellow and grant recipient of the Yonathan Shapiro Foundation & The Harry Bloomfield Postdoctoral Scholarships, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Natoor's postdoctoral research focused on different Notq-related areas, such as reincarnation and mind perception among the Druze, Notq and material culture, and the language and gender elements of the Notq.
Dr. Shayna Bernstein (2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023)
Dr. Bernstein received her PhD in Biology from the University of Miami. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Demography Research Lab, under the supervision of Prof. Isaac Sasson. Dr. Bernstein received further support from the Healthy Longevity Research Center. Her work on racial inequalities in subjective survival expectations was published in SSM-Population Health.
Dr. Yan Zheng (2023-2024, 2024-2025).
Dr. Zheng received her PhD in Demography from the University of Hong Kong. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Demography Research Lab led by Prof. Isaac Sasson at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Zheng’s work focuses on social inequalities in health and longevity. Her work appeared in the European Journal of Public Health and BMC Public Health, among other journals.
Dr. Luda Garmash (2023-2024, 2024-2025)
Dr. Garmash received her PhD from the University of Haifa and subsequently joined Prof. Isaac Sasson’s Demography Research Lab at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Garmash studies gender and ethnic segregation in the workplace and its impact on wage inequalities in Israel.
Dr. Lior Yohanani (2023-2024, 2024-2025)
Dr. Lior Yohanani holds a PhD in Sociology from Rutgers University. His main research fields are migration, conflict, and intergroup relations. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the project “Jewish-Arab Relations in Israel’s Higher Education System,” led by Prof. Yossi Shavit. at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Dr. Eliran Arazi (2024-2025)
Dr. Eliran Arazi received his PhD in Social Anthropology from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales–Paris (Collège de France) and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During his postdoctoral research at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, hosted by Dr. Rami Kaplan, he explored the ontological dimensions of Amazonian carbon projects as manifested and reworked in the crucial link mediating between the Indigenous suppliers of carbon credits and their corporate purchasers: the agencies of project development, management, and consultancy.
Dr. Maria Gretzky (2025-2026)
Dr. Maria Gretzky is a sociologist and anthropologist. Her research looks at the intersections of emotional and digital culture in the fields of finance and education. She completed her PhD as part of the Edmond de Rothschild Excellence Program at Ben-Gurion University.
Dr. Gretzky’s research integrates perspectives from the sociology and anthropology of emotions, economic sociology, sociology of knowledge, and STS. She employs qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, ethnography, and discourse analysis. Her work has been published in leading international journals, including Learning, Media and Technology and Sociological Research Online, as well as in local journals such as Israeli Sociology. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, supervised by Dr. Rami Kaplan, where she is developing a project on how algorithms shape evaluation practices, morality, and emotions in socially sustainable investment.
Dr. Hannah Mayne (2025/6-)
Dr. Hannah Mayne completed her PhD in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. She is currently an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Professor Michal Kravel-Tovi. Hannah’s previous research examined transformations in Orthodox Jewish women’s prayer and the political dimensions of contemporary religious practice. For her postdoctoral studies, she is undertaking a new project on Orthodox Jewish emergency medical volunteers in Montreal, Canada, and Jerusalem. The study will investigate biomedical treatment as a form of pious practice and compare how religious first responders negotiate the provision of intimate care across gender, cultural, and political differences.
