Berg Fellowships
The David Berg Institute offers a number of Postdoctoral Fellowships each academic year. As part of the Institute's Fellowship Program, appointed Postdoctoral Fellows have the opportunity to pursue original research, take part in a variety of law-history related activities and, most importantly, enrich their academic growth while staying at one of the leading law schools in the world.
Berg Institute Postdoctoral Fellows enjoy funding, as well as access to the David J. Light Law Library - in addition to all Faculty-held events, conferences, and colloquia. Some of the Fellows also have the opportunity to be involved in various teaching activities related to their area of research.
Below is a list of Fellows for the current and upcoming years.
Dr. Khinvraj Jangid (2018-2019)
Dr. Khinvraj Jangid is Assistant Professor at Jindal Center for Israel Studies, Jindal School of International Affairs at OP Jindal Global University, Delhi NCR, India. Dr. Jangid holds PhD in West Asian Studies from School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His PhD work explored the episode of revisionist history-writing and the case of the New Historians in Israel of the first Arab-Israel War, 1948. His PhD work was selected for the prestigious international Sylff Award (2009-2012) by the Tokyo Foundation, Japan. Since 2016, he has been fellow at Schusterman Centre for Israel Studies, Brandeis University, USA.
He is working on Post-Doctoral project (March 2018 – February 2019) “Re-Constructing Nations? A Comparative Study of the Historical Narratives in India and Israel” at The Buchman Faculty of Law & Jewish History Department, Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Orli Sela 2017-2018
Dr. Orli Sela is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the David Berg Foundation Institute for Law and History. She earned her Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University with a dissertation that presents the legal history of water rights and water resources management from the end of the Ottoman Era through the British mandate until the end of the first decade after the establishment of Israel. This study demonstrates, for the first time that the Water Law enacted in 1959 recognized private property rights in water and did not abrogate all the rights or transfer them to government ownership. Her current research, under the supervision of Dr. David Schorr, focuses on the vision of David Ben Gurion to nationalize the water in the newborn state of Israel. This vision was obstructed in the legal arena by domestic opponents from "Left" parties and not, as commonly believed, by the capitalists. The study aims to showcase water property rights to subtilize unexplored and unexpected aspects of the Right vs. Left political dichotomy in the newborn state of Israel.
Dr. Ayelet Libson (2014-15)
Dr. Ayelet Libson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the David Berg Foundation Institute for Law and History. She holds a B.A. with honors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and earned her Ph.D. at New York University with a dissertation entitled Radical Subjectivity: Law and Self-Knowledge in the Babylonian Talmud. Ayelet was an Inaugural Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute’s Judaism and Human Rights project, and she has won several prestigious prizes from institutes such as the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Minerva Center for Human Rights, and NYU and Cardozo Law schools. Her research interests concentrate on Jewish law, legal history, legal theory, and the relationship between religion and state.
Dr. Levi Cooper (2014-15)
Levi, originally from Australia, holds an LL.B. (cum laude), LL.M., and Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University’s Faculty of Law. His dissertation was titled “The Admor of Munkács Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira: The Hasidic Posek – Image and Approach.” In 2013-14 he was a postdoctoral fellow with I-CORE (Israel Centers of Research Excellence) – Da‘at Hamakom: Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in the Modern Jewish World. Levi’s most recent research focuses on Jewish Law in the late modern period, particularly in the Hasidic milieu. As a Berg Fellow he plans to explore the interface between Hasidic lore and Jewish law.
Dr. Geetanjali Srikantan (2013-15)
Dr. Geetanjali Srikantan is trained as a lawyer and holds a doctorate in cultural studies from the Center for the Study of Culture and Society, Manipal University, Bangalore, India. Her dissertation was titled: "Law, Colonialism and the Religious Place in India". Her research focuses on the process of secularization and its universality; investigating the historical trajectory of the legal category of “religion” by analyzing the regulation of places of worship in British India. Dr. Srikantan is working on a book on the topic, and has presented chapters in various fora at TAU and other Israeli universities.
