Doctor Efrat Ben-Ze'ev
Nationality: Israel
Year: 1996
Subject Area: Social Sciences
My doctoral thesis, supported by a Wingate Scholarship, dealt with the memories of rural Palestinians uprooted in 1948 and it was submitted to the University of Oxford in November 2000. I have since moved on to explore two other aspects of the events of 1948: The characteristics and impact of British Mandate cartography and the memories of Jewish fighters who participated in the war. Currently I am writing a book that combines these different perspectives. Its aim is to challenge the nationalistic approach and bring to the forefront some of the hidden facets of the formative events of 1948.
In recent years I have published articles on the memories of Palestinian refugees, as compared to army documents, on the role of taste and smell in current commemoration, on the silences and omissions characterizing Jewish veterans' narratives and on intergenerational transmission. I live in Jerusalem and teach at the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ruppin Academic Centre.