Department of Sociology

Dr. Ruth Carmi joined the department in 2023. Her research and teaching focus on intersectionality, gender & sexuality, law and society, and peacebuilding. She earned her LL.B in Law & Psychology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an LL.M in International Legal Studies with a specialization in Human Rights and Gender from American University Washington College of Law, an M.A. in Sociology, and a Ph.D. in Sociology & Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame.

Dr. Carmi especially enjoys teaching courses that focus on inequalities and social concerns and investigate the connection between different systems of inequality, such as gender, race and ethnicity, class, heteronormativity, and militarism. Her courses incorporate an international lens, and she enjoys discussions that connect theory to real-life events.   

Her previous professional work as a human-rights lawyer in Israel informs her study of the connection between Israeli society's racial formation, gender inequalities, and the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her research investigates the oppressive forces that shape the state's discrimination against women of color in a local context and the ways in which these forces influence women of color within and across ethno-racial groups. Informed by Black feminist thought, intersectionality, and critical race theories, her research examines the effect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the systematic marginalization of Palestinian and Jewish women of color in Israel.