Yehudit Ronen

Yehudit Ronen is a professor emerita in the political science department at Bar-Ilan University, a researcher and lecturer on the political history of the Middle East.

Her numerous publications include Sudan in a Civil War: Between Africanism, Arabism and Islam and The Maghrib: Politics, Society, and Economy. She is also author of a novel, Carob Whiskey.

Prof.  Ronen has thus far delivered nearly 100 papers at scientific conferences in Israel and abroad; She has published numerous academic books and 88 papers in leading Israeli and international refereed academic journals and academic books, the vast majority of which as a sole author; She has organized and chaired about 40 academic conferences and have also frequently represented Bar-Ilan University in interviews and commentary articles in the Israeli and international media on subjects related to the Middle Eastern and African studies, particularly regarding the Maghreb-Sahel environs, dealing with religion and politics including jihadist Terror and the "Islamic State", illegal migration to Europe and tribal and ethnic conflicts. Along with her research, supervising and teaching assignments (successively gaining excellence in the university’s annual teaching surveys), Prof. Ronen has taken an active interest in additional administrative and academic aspects of the department, the faculty and the broader university sphere, serving in 2016, 2017 and 2018 as the Academic Head of the Colleges' Special Programs at Bar-Ilan University.  Prof. Yehudit Ronen has carved out a special and even ground-breaking niche in the Israeli and international scholarly communities, acquiring expertise and a reputation in the context of the political, religious, ethnic, tribal and socio-economic processes, along with geostrategic and military aspects and international relations in the broader Middle East and particularly in the Arab-Maghreb and its African Sahel environment. More specifically, her studies place a special emphasis on Libya ("Qaddafi's Libya in World Politics") , the two Sudanese states, Mali and the broader Sahel; the collapsed State Order and the violent conflicts in the region in the pre- and post-“Arab Spring” uprisings; the global Jihadist community and the "Islamic State" and their burgeoning political and military power in the Middle East and the African Sahel as well as the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula; and the erosion in the status of the Arab nation-state. This multi-faceted research takes an in-depth look at the issues that are crucial to the understanding of the abovementioned interrelated processes, and often explores them by means of the Libyan test case, which lies at the heart of Prof. Ronen's academic research projects.