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Ayelet Banai, M.A., D.Phil.

Senior Research Fellow

Centre for Advanced Studies “Justitia Amplificata”

Varrentrappstraße 40-42
60054 Frankfurt am Main
Raum 014
Telefon: +49 69 798 - 25351

E-Mail: banai(at)soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Homepage Ayelet Banai at Justitia Amplificata

Research

I am a political theorist interested also in the history of ideas and their political power. The subjects of my research include liberal theory and history of liberalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I have focused especially on theories and history of self-determination, theories of diversity, multiculturalism and nationalism and theories of freedom.

Common to all these issues is an underlying problem that has guided my research (and to which I am yet to find the answer): in which ways can morally universal theories of rights and democracy make sense of and give appropriate philosophical and political spaces to the particular attachments, identities and affiliations of individuals?

In my doctoral thesis, Drawing Boundaries: Nations, States and Self-Determination (Oxford University, 2009), I explored the ways in which liberals, democrats and radicals in Europe approached particular national and cultural claims in the context of drawing and redrawing the map of Europe in 1848, 1920 and after 1989. I am currently working on a book, based on the doctoral thesis and post-doctoral research, under the provisional title: Cosmopolitanism and Self-Determination.

Short Bio

I hold a D.Phil. (PhD) in Political Theory from the University of Oxford and M.A. in Political Science (summa cum laude) from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I also studied in Paris and in Berlin, as a visiting doctoral student at Sciences Po. and at Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, and as a DAAD exchange student at the Free University of Berlin.

Prior to my current appointment, I was a research fellow in the interdisciplinary project Transnational Justice and Democracy of the Excellence Cluster The Formation of Normative Orders, Goethe University, Frankfurt with TU-Darmstadt. I also taught political science, political theory and European politics and history as class and tutorial teacher in Oxford, teaching assistant in Jerusalem and researcher in Frankfurt. Since 2006, I am a founding member of the Global Justice Network.

Publications

Recent Publications
Ayelet Banai, Miriam Ronzoni and Christian Schemmel (eds.), Social Justice, Global Dynamics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (London: Routledge, forthcoming 2011)
Ayelet Banai, “Diversity and Minority Rights: Two Models”, in Democracy Governance and Citizenship special journal issue of Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics (forthcoming October 2010)

Recent working paper
Ayelet Banai, “Political Self-Determination and the Normative Significance of Territorial Boundaries” presented at the Annual Conference of the “Territory and Justice Network”, Dublin July 2010