Alexander Koensler, Ph.D., is currently an Associate Professor (habilitated as Full Professor) of the Anthropology of Globalization at the University of Perugia, a Visiting Researcher at the Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Italy, and a bush-league beekeeper in his spare time. He has served in different faculty positions at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland/UK, University of Münster, Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s desert studies campus in Sede Boqer, Israel.
How can we live together in a world that is both deeply divided and undeniably shared?
This is the question lies at the heart of Alexander’s research. He explores the social production of political claims in ethnonational conflicts, the potential of grassroots social justice activism, and the challenges of living in contested environments. His work focuses particularly on Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Jewish relations and rural changes in the Southern Mediterranean.
Over a period spanning two decades, Alexander has undertaken several years of ethnographic fieldwork in southern Israel and its border regions, collaborating with Bedouin and Jewish citizens, Arab-Jewish coexistence groups, and activists engaged in Israeli-Palestinian solidarity efforts. Since 2016, he also has worked with grassroot food sovereignty movements in Italy.
His publications—written in English, Italian, German, and French—include four research monographs and articles in leading journals such as American Anthropologist, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. His forthcoming book, Arab-Jewish Solidarity Activism and the Separatist Imagination, will be published by SUNY Press.