We’ve listed below short biographies of the speakers that will participate in Conscripted Realities. In our opinion, each one of them is more interesting than the other, and we look forward to host them in Amsterdam. Join us to the symposium to hear their genuine views on the Israeli militarism, and how it affects the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Galit Gelbort is a PhD Candidate at Ben Gurion University (Israel), Department of Politics and Government. Received B.Sc. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and M.Sc. International Politics (Distinction) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. The topic of her PhD research is the relationship between security and privatization in the two conflict zones of Israel/Palestine and Nigeria. As her research progresses, she is further engrossed by the problem of the public/private dichotomy, in particular because of the persisting role of the state in governance and security maintenance. Before returning to pursue her masters and PhD, she worked for eight years in the human rights NGO sector in Jerusalem.
Erella Grassiani is an anthropologist who works on the Israeli military, on issues of morality and the privatized military industry. She completed her PhD at the VU University in Amsterdam in 2009. She is currently working there as a lecturer. Erella is also one of the co-founders of gate48, platform for critical Israeli’s in the Netherlands.
Abir Kopty, born in Nazareth, is a Palestinian social, feminist and political activist. She holds a Masters in Political Communication from the City University of London, and works as a media analyst and consultant. She is a former city council member in Nazareth and a former spokeswoman for Mossawa, Advocacy center for Arab Citizens in Israel. She is a board member of Women Against Violence, the Mossawa Center and the Jenin Freedom Theatre and is active in Women Coalition for Peace. Kopty blogs at abirkopty.wordpress.com
Rela Mazali, author, independent scholar, and feminist peace activist from Israel, writes and publishes in both Hebrew and English; One of the founders (1998) of the New Profile movement to de-militarize Israeli society and state; Co-Founder (2010) of the innovative disarmament project Gun Free Kitchen Tables; Active since 1980 in efforts to end Israel’s occupation; Initiator & Ass. Director of “Testimonies” (1993) a documentary scrutinizing soldiers’ actions in the first Intifada; One of eight women from Israel nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Swiss-based One-thousand Peacewomen project (2005); Served on the Jury of Conscience at the concluding session of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2005).
Reviews described Rela’s Maps of Women’s Goings & Stayings (Stanford University Press, 2001), as a “daring departure from the conventions of being, telling, writing, and knowing” and one of the best among recent “narratives in space and time … about women for women.” Her study, “The Gun on the Kitchen Table: The Sexist Subtext of Private Policing in Israel,” (in: Farr, Myrttinen & Schnabel eds., Sexed Pistols: The Gendered Impacts of Small Arms and Light Weapons, 2009, UN Univ. Press, Tokyo) closely scrutinizes Israel’s domestic ‘security guard’ industry; Her latest book is: Home Archaeology (2011, in Hebrew).
Inna Michaeli is the Development Director for the Coalition of Women for Peace, a feminist peace movement of Palestinian and Jewish women in Israel. She holds M.A. in Cultural Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is about to begin her PhD research in Sociology in the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. She immigrated to Israel with her family in 1992 from St. Petersburg, Russia. For over 13 years she has been active in feminist, LGBT and anti-occupation movements in Israel.
Orna Sasson-Levy has served as a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and in the Program in Gender Studies at Bar- Ilan University since 2003. Her research interests are feminist theory, militarism and gender, masculinities, new social movements and race and ethnicity. She has published in the areas of femininities, masculinities and military in The Sociological Quarterly (2002), The Sociological Inquiry (2003), Gender & Society (2003, 2007) Identities (2003), Signs (2007), Men and Masculinities (2008) and Sociological Perspectives (2008). Sasson-Levy is the author of “Identities in Uniform: Masculinities and Femininities in the Israeli Military” (2006, in Hebrew). In her most recent research, Dr. Sasson-Levy examines contemporary ethnic perceptions in Israel, with an emphasis on Ashkenaziyut (Jews of European descent). Her latest publication “The Military in a Globalized Environment: Perpetuating an “Extremely Gendered” Organization” appears in E. Jeanes, D. Knights and P.Yancey Martin (Eds.): “Handbook of Gender, Work and Organization” (2011).
