I am a Senior Lecturer and Vice-Chair in Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. I combine three fields of historical research:  the Ottoman Empire, Muslim medicines, and environmental history. So far I have worked on madness, military medicine, hospitals, court medicine, medical modernization and urban public health in the pre-modern Middle East, among other aspects of medicine as a body of knowledge and clinical reality. My final goal is to unravel social and cultural realities as seen through the medical prism in the Turkish and Arabic speaking worlds. After all, following Susan Sontag, we all hold dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick; sooner or later we are obliged, at least for a spell, to be citizens of that "other" place. More recently I started to study environmental issues pertaining to the early modern Middle East, such as the useage of wood and timber and horticulure. I maintain that Ottomans had "green" world-view in that they appreciated the reciprocal relationship between nature and human beings. Furthermore, to some extent they looked at nature as an extension of humanity rather than as species apart.

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Ottoman Science: Knowledge, Science, and Technology in the Ottoman Empire. Ra'anana: The Open University of Israel, forthcoming (2012) [in Hebrew]
Ottoman Medicine: Healing and Medical Institutions, 1500-1700. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009.  

Islam: A Short Introduction. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press and Mapa Publishers, 2006. [in Hebrew]

For the complete list of publications, please refer to the attached PDF file.
File Attachment

In the 2011-2012 academic year, I will be offering:

• Society and Environment in the Middle East (M.A. seminar);
• Health, Gender and Age in the Middle East (M.A. seminar at the Middle East Studies Program, in English);
• Medicine and Medical Ethics in Muslim Societies (B.A. 3rd year seminar);
• Six Feet Under: Death in Muslim Societies (B.A. 2nd and 3rd elective course);
• The History of the Arabs and Islam (B.A. first year mandatory lecture);
• Excercise in Ottoman History (B.A. first year elective excercise).

In previous years I also taught:

• The Muslim Life Cycle (B.A. elective course, 2nd-3rd years);
• Academic Writing (mandatory first year B.A. excercise).

My research has been supported by international institutions. The main fellowships, prizes and research grants are:
* Israel Science Foundation [ISF] / Basic Grant (twice);
* Deutsch-Israelische Stiftung für Wissenschaftlische Forschung und Entwicklung [GIF];
* Dan David Prize;
* Alon Fellowship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education;
* Friends of the Princeton University Library Fellowship; 
* Research Scholarship from the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies (Newnham College, Cambridge); 
* Research Scholarship from the Turkish Ministry of National Education (Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı);
* Rothschild Fellowship by Yad Ha-Nadiv;
* and the Rottenschtreich Scholarship from the Israeli Council for Higher Education.

I was also a co-chairperson of the Baer Forum, an inter-university platform for academic discussions for professional scholars in Middle Eastern Studies in Israeli academic institutions. I was elected by the Rector of the University, the University Center for the Advancement of Teaching, and the student body as an Outstanding Lecturer for 2009-2010.

For the full list of grants and fellowships, please open the attached file.