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The Negev Center for Sustainability
The Negev Center for Sustainability
About us Members

Members of the center

Administration

Senior Lecturer
Department of Geography, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Sustainability Science | Biophysical Accounting | Society and Environment

meidadk@bgu.ac.il

Dr. Meidad Kissinger professional interests and academic background are interdisciplinary. He is a geographer and sustainability scientists specializing in bio-physical accounting and sustainability policy and planning. His research explores variety of linkages between human activities and the natural environment (dependence and impact). He explores the interactions between society, ecosystems services and sustainability at the urban, national and international scales. He uses and develop bio-physical (i.e., land, energy, water, waste) accounting tools, and examine the policy implications of human – environment interactions at several spatial scales. Dr Kissinger holds a PhD in urban and regional planning from the 'School of Community and Regional Planning' at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He holds a Natural resources management Master degree from the University of Haifa and bachelor degree in Geography from the Tel Aviv University.
Dr. Kissinger is a faculty member at the Department of Geography and Environmental development at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in which he is leading the 'Sustainability and Environmental Policy' research group. His research in recent years covers wide range of sustainability research themes including: Urban sustainability, Energy society nexus, sustainable food systems, behavior and the environment.

Research Center Coordinator
The Humphrey Institute, Ben Gurion University, Israel

Researchers

Associate Professor
Department of Geography, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Urban Planning | Urban Dynamics

Cities hold the key to social and environmental sustainability. Particularly, urban planning should acknowledge the facts that a) cities are complex systems; b) democracy is embedded in the nature of cities. The "Self-Planning" idea I promote in my research aims toward creating enhanced and encompassing urbanism and adjusting planning processes to these basic features.

Professor
Department of Geography, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Urban Planning | Political Geography | Ethnic Relations

Oren Yiftachel teaches geography and planning at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba. His research has focused on critical understandings space, power and conflict, with particular attention to ethnic, social and urban relations. His work focuses on Israel/Palestine within theoretical and comparative frameworks.

Senior Lecturer
Department of Geography and Bona Terra Department of Man in the Desert at The Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental & Energy Research, Ben-Gurion University, Israel

Urban Planning | Urban Design | Transportation & Urbanism

Yodan Rofè is an architect and holds a PhD in urban planning from UC Berkeley. His studies deal with urban design, cognitive mapping and people's experience of the built environment, planning and design of streets, walkability and safety, and the relation between transportation and land use. Part of his recent work focuses on the spatial structure and evolution of the unrecognized Bedouin villages as informal planning.

Field Leaders

Negev Vitality Index Project Coordinator

Local Sustainable Economy | Distributive Justice

asafr@shatil.nif.org.il

Graduate in ecology, from Ben Gurion University (Blaustein Institute for Desert Research), specializes in local and regional development including their spatial, environmental, economic, political and civic involvement aspects. In recent years Asaf acted as the academic director of Project Wealth, an international project promoting Local Sustainable Economic Development in the Negev in which he conducted different kinds of think&do work on various issues including Regional measures of well-being, local public procurement, creative industries and others. Today he is coordinating projects focusing on regional distributive justice and regional development at Shatil.

A Statistical Yearbook for the Bedouin Society

Urban Planning | Urbanism | Regional development

kiki@mlc-negev.org.il

Aharonovitz deals with the interactions between human and man-made space. His MA thesis dealt with links between economic and spatial cycles, and through his PhD dissertation he studied urban planning approaches to a multicultural reality.
He is interested to study various aspects of the urban realm, such as: urban lifestyles, philosophy of the city and attitudes of planning authorities towards citizens. Previously, Itzhak has dealt with study local alternatives to conventional and distorting "invisible hand", as part of a local sustainable economy thinking group in cooperation with regional NGOs.

"Plannery" Project Coordinator

Urban Planning | Environment and Planning

yaara.rosner@gmail.com

Ya'ara is an architect, an urban planner and a doctoral student at Ben Gurion University. She has led and participated for over a decade in planning teams that defined the national policy regarding the metropolitan parks, national environmental policy to preserve the coastal environment and strategic and statutory plans for cities and regions.
She is the winner of several academic grants and prizes, including the president "best researcher" (2015), the planners' association "best researcher" (2013), the Sandberg foundation scholarship for excellent research in the field of Architecture and Design (2009) an was part of a workshop for noted researchers in Harvard university.
Her research in recent years has been focused on mediating the needs and aspirations of local communities, the Israeli planning system and geographical limitations