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Why choose the anthropology department at the University of Haifa?
Unique Adventure
The department at the University of Haifa is one of a kind. Only at Haifa can you study anthropology ‘in its own right’ or as we say in Hebrew – ‘netto’, as part of a diverse student body. The department combines a strong foundation in social science with a humanistic perspective, attracting students from a wide range of scholarly fields and backgrounds. In addition, semi-applied tracks, opening in the near future, promise to create interfaces between anthropology and biomedicine, mental health, and social activism towards aiming for social change.
Meet Our Practicum Students
Maria Volkova
Maria graduated with a BA in Art History and an MA in Folklore and Mythology from Russian State University. She completed a second MA in a joint program from The University of Manchester and The Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Her graduate research focused on the rationality debate initiated by Peter Winch and Alasdair McIntyre and proposed a neo-Wittgenstenian development of Winch's arguments. From 2019-2020, Maria was part of the Oxford-Russia Fellowship where her studies examine the religious organizations of shamans in Buryatia and Irkutsk region, showing how the state forms implicit criteria of religion, influencing traditional practices.
Micah Sprouffske
Micah graduated with a BA from the University of Oregon, USA, as a triple major in archaeology, linguistics and Chinese. He completed his MA at Eastern Oregon University, USA, and Wuhan University in Hubei, China. His graduate research was composed of two different projects titled, "EOU-Bilingual Education in Elementary Education" and "WU-Comparative Global Mythos of the Crow as portrayed in the 'Shenwu Fu.'"
Here in Haifa, Micah will be conducting research focused on how culture affects second language acquisition in elementary education.
Julia Rosenzweig
Julia graduated with a BA from Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Bochum, Germany. She is currently working towards her MA in Philosophy and Social Science with a focus on social theory and cultural psychology, also at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Julia is interested in researching cultural identity, conflicts and social engagement.
Joni Weintraub (2021 - 2022)
Joni graduated with a BA in anthropology for the University of Connecticut in 2020 and spent the past year teaching English in Israel as a Masa Israel Teaching Fellow. Joni will be undertaking a pilot ethnographic study on progressive Jewish-Israeli left-wing political activists and their lived experience in a biblical study group with religious settlers.
Robert Hildebrandt (Fall 2021)
Robert is an American doctoral student in anthropology at George Washington University, originally from Los Angeles, California. He studies the gendered experiences of Palestinian citizens of Israel working in the Israeli economy. In particular, he is interested in how Palestinian citizens from the village of Jisr al-Zarqa have altered their economic survival strategies as both their social and economic situations change. Robert received his BA in 2009 from Carleton College, his MA in 2014 from the University of Chicago, has spent over 5 years living, working and studying Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa and has spent two summers studying Hebrew at the University of Haifa prior to starting his fieldwork this fall in Israel.
Grete Erckmann (2020 - 2021)
Grete Erckmann, psychologist, PhD student at University of Vienna, Department of Education (Biography, Education and Society). My PhD project "Living Youth in urban 'problem neighborhoods' - a biographical and ethnographical research" is designed as a participatory research project. With this special focus - through the life stories of socially marginalized young people and through field research in so called "problem neighborhoods" -Â it is possible to analyze power structures in their interconnectedness from the perspective of those affected. Of special interest are interrelations of different dimensions of social inequality (e.g. class, gender, ethnicity/ "race", religion) and how they appear in the narratives of (young) people. During my stay in University of Haifa I would like to focus on the analysis and presentation of my already completed field research. I am very much interested in exchange with other researchers, discussing methodological questions that arise regarding a possible combination of different types of material/ data (documents, interview transcipts, field notes,...) and ways of presenting "results".
Hatice Soeylemez (2020 - 2021)
I am a PhD student at the University of Zurich, Social Anthropology and Popular Culture Department. My PhD research is on the glocalization of alternative education initiatives, particularly the cooperative democratic schooling models, in Turkey as a new social movement. Israel is quite prominent in education reform discussions, alternative education movements and democratic education. The democratic school in Hadera was known as the first school in the world labelled as ‘democratic’. The founder of the school, Yaacov Hecht was very influential on the export of ‘democratic education’ as a model to Turkey. During my stay in Haifa, I would like to visit Hadera democratic school and other schools, talk with people who are pioneer in the field of democratic education, social movements and local applications of global education models, and to place my research in its global context by observing the practices of democratic schools in Israel.