Dr Gal Kramarski

I am a social and political anthropologist whose work is based in Palestine/Israel. My research examines the tensions between complicity and resistance under colonial rule, with a particular interest in the political subjectivities and forms of action that emerge within uncomfortable encounters, contradictions, and morally fraught terrains.

My work focuses on the intersections of development and state violence in Jerusalem. In my doctoral research, I explored the everyday experiences of Palestinian professionals employed within an Israeli socioeconomic development project and discussed the kind of social life that forms under extremely coercive realities. By asking how these workers understand and relate to what the Israeli state frames as an 'opportunity,' I developed the concept of a tainted opportunity: an opening that can be necessary and dangerous at the same time; a space for action that is also compromised and morally ambivalent; a position that comes with stigma and dirt that may taint those engaging with it.

I previously studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA in Political Science and Middle Eastern History; MA in International Development) and at the University of Cambridge (MPhil and PhD in Social Anthropology). 

I teach a course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of International Development, titled: Unsettling Development: Gender, Power and Social Transformation, an MA-level course.