Dr. Rula Hardal is a research fellow at the Kogod Center for the Study of Jewish and Contemporary Thought at the Shalom Hartman Institute and a lecturer at the Arab-American University on the campus for advanced studies in Ramallah.

She is a member of two research groups on nationalism and citizenship in Israel and partnership-based peace at the Van Leer Institute, and a fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking. She deals in the field of political theory of identity, minorities, colonialism and post-colonialism, social movements and feminist activism in the Middle East.

Dr. Hardel is a political activist in several initiatives to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is a board member of the Adalah organization – the legal center for the rights of the Arab minority in Haifa. She also serves as a political commentator on local and international television channels.

She received her doctorate in political science from the University of Hanover in Germany, after winning a scholarship from the academic organization of the German Catholic Church. She worked as a lecturer at the same university in the Department of Political Science and International Relations and in the program for Advanced Studies in Gender for several years.

Born and raised in Kfar Peki’in, she completed her bachelor’s degree at the Hebrew University in the School of Social Work, and her second degree in managing non-profit organizations at the University of Haifa.

She worked for ten years after graduation at the Ministry of Welfare, in civil society organizations in Israel, including women’s organizations, and was a partner in establishing some of them, and a feminist activist in Arab society in Israel.

In 2015, she returned to Israel and joined Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, East Jerusalem, as an associate professor of political science until the summer of 2021. For some of her years there, she headed the Social Work Department.