VIU Visiting professors

Gadi Algazi is a social historian, who teaches at the Department of History at Tel Aviv University and currently serves as director of the Minerva Center for German History there. His main fields of interest are the social and cultural history of Western Europe between 1350 and 1600, historical anthropology (especially the history of family, kinship and gender), the social history of colonialism in Israel/Palestine, particularly after 1948, and the history of science. Most recent publications: “Kepler’s Labors: Figurations of Scholarly Work c. 1600,” History of Science 61:4 (2023); “Nomadizing the Bedouin: Displacement, Resistance and Patronage in the Northern Negev under Israeli Rule, 1951/1952,” Journal of Palestine Studies 53:1 (2024); “The First Act in the Struggle of the Maʿbarot, 1951–1952: Contestation amid Subjection”, in Dafna Hirsch (ed.), Entangled Histories in Palestine/Israel: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (New York, 2024).

BA, MA and PhD in Arabic Language and Literature (Hebrew University, Jerusalem). Associate Professor at the Department or Philosophy of TAU. Taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Was Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, Carleton University of Ottawa and at Harvard, Priceton and Stanford Universities and Member of the advisory committee on graduate Islamic studies at Al-Qasimi Islamic College. Was advisor in peace negotiations for the Israeli Prime Minister. Author of Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature, Leiden: Brill and Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991 (198 p); Socrates Arabus, Jerusalem, The Hebrew University Institute of Asian and African Studies, 1995, (413 pp); (with S. Abed), Al-Farabi's Philosophical Lexicon, Cambridge, The Gibb Memorial Trust, 2008, 2 vols. (1100 pp.). Most recent publications include: (2004) "Has Islam introduced a New Perception of Time?" Al-Usur al-Wusta, the Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists (University of Chicago), vol. 16, no. 2, pp.34-37; "Toward a Palestinian Arabic Emotive Lexicon: Invitation for Discussion". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, April 2005, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-13; (with Jeanne Brett), "Perceptions of Time and Their Impact on Negotiation in Arabic-Speaking Islamic World". Negotiation Journal, 23/1 (2007) 55-73; "Socrates in Arabic Tradition", The Blackwell Companion to Socrates, Ed. S. Ahbel-Rappe and R. Kamtekar, U. of Michigan, 2005, (pp. 317-336).

Degrees in History and Law, BA (Seoul National University, hereafter SNU), MA (SNU), MA (Regional Studies, Harvard University), Ph.D. in History of Korean-American Relations (SNU), and J.D. (University of Hawaii at Manoa). Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Previously he worked as a Junior Professor at the University of Tuebingen, Germany (April 2014 - October 2019). He came to Ca' Foscari in October 2019. He is doing a SPIN project titled "From European International Law to Asian One: Korean Experience, 1880s-1940s" (2021-23). Main teaching and research field: Modern Korean History, Law and Society, and International Law. Relevant publications in relation to teaching at VIU are “Modifying the Hague Convention?: US Military Occupation of Korea and Japanese Religious Property in Korea, 1945-1948,” Acta Koreana 21/1 (June 2018): 529-553 and “Historical Development of Judicial Independence in South Korea: Focus on Colonial and Post-Colonial Period,” in Sojin Lim and Niki J.P. Alsford eds., Routledge Handbook of Contemporary South Korea (Routledge, 2021), pp. 26-41, etc.

Geographer by higher education and traveller by passion, he had an international higher education, starting from a Fulbright scholarship at the University of California (USA), to continue into research (co-tutoring Ph. D) in Germany (at the University of Freiburg). Later on, during his international civil servant mandate at UNESCO, he obtained the International Certificate on Advanced Studies in Environmental Diplomacy at the University of Geneva. He served UNESCO (at the Venice Office and at the World Heritage Centre in Paris), dealing with the World Heritage Convention, the MaB Program and the Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage. More recently, he initiated an international consultancy activity based on the issues of cultural and natural heritage management and he has coached the processes of UNESCO candidacies in various sectors (World Heritage, Intangible Cultural Heritage and Creative Cities) in different countries. Affiliated to the University of Padova, he does regularly lecture at the graduate level in various countries (University of Bethlehem, University of Freiburg, and University of Belgrade) on the topics of cultural and natural heritage, cultural diplomacy, international relationships and European Integration.

GBA in Commerce, MA in Law (Waseda). Professor, Waseda University School of Law. Member of the Task Force to design the Reformation of Personal Property Secured Transaction Laws for the Ministry of Justice of Japan. Was Visiting Scholar at the Columbia Law School and the University of Pennsylvania. Teaching Fields: Japanese Civil Law, Law of Obligations, Law of Secured Transactions, Mortgage Law and Comparative Studies with American Legal Issues. Published (in Japanese) book chapters, case reviews and articles in Law Journals. One of his main fields of research is that of mortgages and secured transactions in the United States and Japan, for which he was assigned a Waseda Research Award, also in recognition to his contribution to the international dissemination of Japanese Civil Law.

BA in Middle Eastern History and General History (TAU), PhD in History (Hebrew University, Jerusalem).
Full Professor at the Department of History and founder and Director of the Program on Renaissance Studies at Tau. Member of the editorial board of the "Mediterranean Historical Review" and "The Medieval Mediterranean". Member of the Commission for the Publication of Sources on Venetian History at the State Archives of Venice. Published extensively on Venetian overseas Possessions with particular focus on Cyprus and, more broadly, on the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Mediterranean World and on the Jews in the Levant and in Italy. Author of the books: Trading Nations. Jews and Venetians in the Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean (Brill, Leiden 1995), xi+237 pp.; Cyprus, The Franks and Venice(13th-16th Centuries) (Ashgate, London 2000) (Variorum Collected Studies Series CS 688), xii+332 pp.; The Italian Renaissance: The Emergence of a Secular Culture (Tel Aviv 2000), 144 pp. [in Hebrew].

B.A. in Political Science and General Studies, M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science (Hebrew University, Jerusalem). Lecturer at the Department of Political Science of TAU. Was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Research interests focus on the interrelations between Art and Politics, Political Thought, Intellectual History, Political Culture and Israeli Politics. Author of "The Jew as Destroyer of Culture in the National Socialist Ideology" in Patterns of Prejudice (1/1998). Publications in Hebrew include: Romanticism of Steel: Art & Politics in Nazi Germany (Magnes - The Hebrew University Press, 1999); The Labyrinth of Legitimacy: Referendum in Israel (Hakibutz Hameuhad, 1994) and -as editor- State and Religion Yearbook 1994-1995 (The Center for Progressive Judaism in Israel, Jerusalem 1996), She recently completed a book manuscript in Hebrew and English titled The Totalitarian Ideal: A Comparative Look at Politics and Art in Fascist Italy, Russia Under Stalin and Nazi Germany.

Member of the Fine Arts Department at Boston College since 1989. She has primarily taught Painting: foundations and advanced levels. She has received several grants and fellowships including, two awards from The Massachusetts Artists Foundation, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a fellowship from The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland. Her work has been exhibited in New York, where she had four solo shows between 1985 and 1994, and in California, Boston, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ireland. Her work is in many prestigious collections. Mary received a BFA in painting from Boston University and a MED in Art Education from Lesley University. She also attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Laurea in Political Sciences (Milan), M.A. in African Studies (Soas, London), PhD in African History (Siena and Soas). General Secretary at VIU. Was advisor for The British Refugee Council, researcher and campaigner for Africa in the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, Head of Communications for Minority Rights Group International. Recently taught in the European Master in Mediterranean Intermediation at Ca' Foscari. Doctoral thesis focused on women's ownership and inheritance rights in the Fanti coastal areas of Ghana from the mid 1800s to the 1920s. Published, with M. De Ponte and E. Noli, Rights without peace. Human Rights and armed conflict, Florence, CEP, 1999 (in Italian). Forthcoming articles: 'Is this British Justice?' Perceptions of colonial justice in African newspapers published in the Gold Coast, 1874-1926, "Canadian Journal of African Studies" and Violations of fundamental rights against women and post-conflict settlements: the Liberian case in F. Declich (ed.), Women's rights five years after the Beijing Conference and the International Criminal Court.

Degrees in History and in Anthropology (Paris X); PhD in Sociology with an ethnographic thesis on Lega Nord activists (EHESS, Paris). Professor in Political Sociology at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques et Internationales (IEPI), University of Lausanne. Main Fields of Teaching: Political Sociology and Political Science (party politics, mobilizations, nationalism); Methodology (ethnographic and qualitative methods); Gender Studies (gender and political activism). Main Fields of Research: Political activism (party, unions, social movements); Gender and Politics; Race and Politics; Right-wing and conservative movements; Nationalism and identity-building; Ethnographic approaches (methodological and ethical questions).