Alexander Koensler
Alexander Koensler (born 1977) is a social scientist and visual anthropologist who specializes in the ethnographic study of social movements and grassroot activism in Israel/Palestine and the Southern Mediterranean.
Academic career
Alexander is currently an Associate Professor (habilitated as Full Professor)[1][2] of the Anthropology of Globalization at the University of Perugia, one of the oldest universities in Europe, and a Visiting Researcher at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI), Fiesole, Italy.[2]
He has served in different faculty positions in Europe and the Middle East.
Between 2013 and 2018, as a Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland/UK, he contributed to the establishment of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, collaborating in several research projects as well with the Institute for Global Food Security. At the same time, he also taught a core model on conflict resolution, and established. He lthe the Peasant Activism Project, a multidiscpiplinary research project on social change and globalization in the Meditterranean countryside financed by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK.[2]
After recieving his PhD from University of Siena (2009), he has held as well faculty position at University of Münster, Germany and University of Perugia, Italy. Between 2009 and 2011 he was a postdoctoral and visiting researcher at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’, Israel. During that time, he also co-taught in a program for Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli students of the Arava Instiute for Environmental Studies.[2]
Scholarship and Ethnographic Fieldwork
His work combines recent developments in visual anthropology, ethnography, and social movement studies. Focusing in particular on emerging forms of activism, he is interested in the social production of political claims, how to illuminate the potential of “acts” in their ambiguous function of moments of rupture/reproduction and the limits and potential of peace-activism in conflicts.
He is a member of the Center for Documentary Research at Queen’s University Belfast and a co-founder with E. Apostoli Cappello the network “Anthropology and Social Movements” of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He has presented his research and visual documentaries in conferences and invited lectures in Bucharest, Chicago, Innsbruck, Lubljana, Kratovo, San Diego, and many other places around the world.[2]
Over the course of the past two decades he has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork with Arab-Jewish alliances in the Israeli-Palestinian space and about the politics of recognition of Arab-Bedouin rights in the Israeli Negev desert.
In Southern Israel, Alexander las lived over several years in the Bedouin town of Rahat, a desert kibbutz, Be'er Sheva, and Ben Gurion's desert studies campus in Sede Boqer. Grown up in Germany, he also lived in Norther Ireland, Egypt, and lives now in Perugia, Italy, where he is also a bee-keeper in his spare time.[3]
Books
- 2026 (forthcoming): Voices of Reason: Solidarity Activism and the Separatist Imagination, New York: SUNY Press.[4]
- 2025 (with Christine Haemmerling and Marion Naeser-Lather), Utopias of Sustainability – The Sustainability of Utopias. A Multimodal Intervention, Morlacchi University Press, Perugia (Open Access)[5]
- 2019 (with Pietro Meloni): Antropologia dell'alimentazione. Produzione, consumo, movimenti sociali. Milano: Carrocci[6]
- 2015 (monograph): Israeli-Palestinian Mobilizations: Shifting Paradigms. London: Routledge.[7]
- 2012 (co-edited with Amalia Rossi): Comprendere il dissenso. Etnografia e l’antropologia dei movimenti sociali, Morlacchi Editore, Perugia [Understanding dissent. Ethnography and the anthropology of social movements].[8]
- 2008 (monograph): Amicizie vulnerabili. Coesistenza e conflitto in Israele. Morlacchi Editore, Perugia. The volume includes a DVD.[9]
Filmography
- 2025 The Border. Resisiting Monocrops in Italy (Italy, 40 min.)[10]
- 2018 (with F. Loce-Mandes): De-commodifying Foodways (Italy/UK. 70 min.)[11]
- 2016 (with F. Loce-Mandes): An Experimental Path (Italy/UK, 38 min.)[11]
- 2008: La verità liquida. La storia dell’attivismo per la terra dei beduini in Israele (Documentary, 43,00 min.), Morlacchi Editori, Perugia.
References
- ↑ "Alexander Koensler - Università degli Studi di Perugia". www.unipg.it. Retrieved 2025-11-17.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "🌑 Alexander Koensler". www.alexanderkoensler.com. Retrieved 2025-11-17.
- ↑ "🌑 Alexander Koensler". www.alexanderkoensler.com.
- ↑ "Voices of Reason: Solidarity Activism and the Separatist Imagination". Missing or empty
|url=(help) - ↑ Utopias of Sustainability – The Sustainability of Utopias: A Multimodal Intervention. Perugia: Morlacchi UP. 2025. ISBN 9788893926041. Search this book on
- ↑ Koensler, Alexander; Meloni, Pietro (2019). Antropologia dell'alimentazione: Produzione, consumo, movimenti sociali. Milano. ISBN 978-8843098422. Search this book on
- ↑ Koensler, Alexander (2015). Israeli-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms. London, New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781317111887. Search this book on
- ↑ Comprendere il dissenso. Etnografia e antropologia dei movimenti sociali. Morlachhi UP. 2012. ISBN 9788860744913. Search this book on
- ↑ Koensler, Alexander (2008). Amicizie vulnerabili. Coesistenza e conflitto in Israele. Morlacchi. ISBN 9788860742506. Search this book on
- ↑ Koensler, Alexander. The Border. Resisting Monocrops in Italy.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Koensler, Alexander. "Documentaries".
- ↑ Koensler, Alexander. Amicizie vulnerabili. Morlacchi UP. Search this book on
External Links:
- Personal homepage: www.alexanderkoensler.com
This article "Alexander Koensler" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Alexander Koensler. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
