Ariel Zellman, PhD

Ariel Zellman is a post-doctoral fellow at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University. He recently received his doctorate in political science from Northwestern University. His dissertation, Security or Identity? Narratives of State and Nation in International Territorial Conflict Protraction, examines the relative impact of popular narratives of Jewish identity and culture about the Land of Israel and public knowledge of security threats to the State of Israel on Israeli territorial politics and peace negotiations. It also includes a comparative study of territorial politics in the Balkans, with a particular emphasis on the place of Kosovo in the Serbian national imagination. He spent the past two years living and researching in Israel with occasional visits to Serbia where he interviewed members of both parliaments, security officials, academics, journalists, and representatives of various NGOs and activist organizations and conducted two national surveys on popular political attitudes toward territorial compromise.