Biography
How can we live together in a world that is both deeply divided and undeniably shared?
This question lies at the heart of Alexander’s research, which 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, as well as rural changes in the Southern Mediterranean.
Alexander is currently an associate professor (habilitated as full professor) of the Anthropology of Globalization at the University of Perugia, a visiting researcher 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, in the United Kingdom; University of Münster, in Germany, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel.
Over the last 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 has also 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 the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. His forthcoming book, Solidarity Activism and the Separatist Imagination in Israel/Palestine, will be published by SUNY Press.
You can learn more about Alexander’s work in his personal website: https://www.alexanderkoensler.com/