1. Medicalization of childhood in the family and school contexts in Israel.

I explore how, in the age of extensive medicalization, diagnoses such as ADHD are interpreted and negotiated by teachers and parents, and how these interpretations reflect broader cultural, institutional, and moral logics in contemporary Israel. While Israel is a highly medicalized society, this field remains largely underexplored. Inspired by recent sociological conceptions of medicalization, my research focuses on lay people's understanding and pragmatic uses of diagnostic categories and medical knowledge, and on how the cultural dynamics of students’ categorizations shape students' social exclusion and learning opportunities. Supported by a competitive grant from the Israel Science Foundation, this project has yielded several peer-reviewed publications in leading journals in medical sociology and anthropology.

Research papers on the subject:

Fried, T. and Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2023) “Not all diagnoses are created equal: Mothers’ narratives of children, ADHD, and comorbid diagnoses”. Social Science and Medicine, 323, 115838. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115838.

Plotkin-Amrami, G. and Fried, T. (2023) "Sensitive Child, Disturbed Kid: Stigma, Medicalization, and the Interpretive Work of Israeli Mothers of Children with ADHD". Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry. 48 (1), 198-218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09831-7.

Plotkin-Amrami, G., Feniger, Y. and Umansky, Y. (2024) “Medicalizing agents? Teachers’ ambivalent stance and emerging expertise within the ADHD social field in the age of inclusion policy and medicalization in Israel”. Sociology of Health and Illness. 46 (8), 1962-1982.

Plotkin-Amrami, G. and Fried, T. (2025) “Narrative, moral and institutional effects of childhood ADHD: Listening to teachers and mothers of diagnosed children”. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine.

Fried, T. and Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2025) “From Looping to Rippling: Mothers, Diagnostic Expansion and ADHD in Israeli Families of Diagnosed Children”. Medical Anthropology.

2. Maternal subjectivity and gender diverse children

 I began exploring maternal subjectivity in the context of stigma and moral precarity through interviews with Israeli mothers of transgender children several years ago. I examine how a child’s gender transition or affirmation intersects with maternal subjectivities and how mothers of transgender children internalize the morally charged narratives of “good mothering” in contemporary Israel.
I investigate the experiences of mothers of gender-diverse children and their interactions with educational institutions. The research project, developed in collaboration with Dr. Amal Ziv, was awarded a grant from the Spencer Foundation. Our study contributes to emerging scholarship on parenting transgender children, education, and policy.

Research papers on the subject:

Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2023) "Becoming the Mother of a Transgender Child: Ethical Self-Formation and Moral Moods of Mothers in Transition, Ethos, https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12382

Plotkin-Amrami, G., Ziv, A., & Gilboa-Oppenheim, E. (2026). Gendered spaces, temporality, and (absence of) policy: parents’ accounts of their transgender children coming out at school. Gender and Education, 1–19. 

3. Inclusion Policy and the Politics of Diagnosis in Education

 Another research area I have explored in recent years is inclusion policy in the Israeli education system. With support from the Leon Family Foundation, I have been examining, with Halleli Pinson and Talia Fried, how inclusion policies are experienced and interpreted by homeroom teachers, particularly in relation to the growing influence of medicalized understandings of childhood and changing discourses on disability.

Research papers on the subject:

Fried, T., Katz, R., Pinson, H., and Plotkin-Amrami, G (2025). בין שילוב להכלה: פרשנויות של מחנכות לרפורמת הכלה והשתלבות בישראל.“ Between ‘mainstreaming,’ ‘including,’ and ‘containing’: Teachers’ interpretations of the Integration and Inclusion Reform in Israel”. Studies in the Administration and Organization of Education [Iyunim Beminhal Uveh-Irgun Hachinuch] [Hebrew]

 

4. Therapeutic discourse

In my previous research, I focused on the interplay between the knowledge and practices of mental health experts, cultural narratives, national ethos, and ethics in contexts of national-political conflict in Israel—specifically the 2005 Israeli Disengagement from Gaza. Today, I continue to explore therapeutic discourse in its various forms and its connections to political and cultural contexts within Israel.

Research papers on the subject:

Brunner, J and Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2021) "Emotionalising the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: on the civil society engagements of Israeli mental health professionals in response to the Palestinian uprisings. Emotions and Society, 3(1): 115-132. https://doi.org/10.1332/263169021X16148605412750.

 

Segal, A. and Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2022) "Therapeutic discourse in teacher professional discourse: on multidimensionality and elasticity of psychology-based reasoning", Research Papers in Education, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2022.2125051.

 

Brunner J. and Plotkin Amrami, G. (2021). הבטחת חוסן והאסון העתיד לבואThe Promise of Resilience and the Impending Disaster. These Times: magazine of political thought, culture, and science, founded by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute. Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

5. Politics of writing and anthropological ethics

Reflecting on my position as an ethnographer who has examined the complexities of suffering within politically charged contexts has led me to explore the moral dimensions of both clinical reasoning and anthropological writing on ethically and politically contested fields.

Research papers on the subject:

Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2021) "Rethinking the Moral in Narrating Trauma: Ethnographic Insights on Clinical Reasoning". Transcultural Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634615211041200.

 

Plotkin-Amrami, G. (2022) לכתוב על מושאים לא נכונים: אנתרופולוגיה ומוסר בשדות שנויים במחלוקת בהקשר פוליטי ישראלי." Writing on the "Wrong" subjects: Anthropology and morality in controversial social fields within the Israeli political context. Kriot Israeliot: Interdisciplinary Journal in Social Studies and Humanities [Hebrew]. https://www.kriot.co.il/