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Deputy Director, The Woolf Institute
Dr Shana Cohen is Deputy Director of the Woolf Institute and a Research Associate with the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. The Woolf Institute is an independent institute that studies how relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims can enhance understanding of key concepts of public life: community and identity, mutual respect, personal responsibility, and social solidarity. Combining theology with the social sciences and the humanities, the Woolf Institute seeks to strengthen the ethical framework that is needed for our political, economic and social life.
Dr Cohen has been engaged in both academic research and community-based work in Morocco, India, Egypt, Israel, England, and the US. Her research has focused on the transformation of the middle class and the politics of social action under neoliberalism, exploring how the constitution of identity intersects with economic insecurity and ideologies of human potential and social value.
Before coming to Cambridge, she was a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield and taught Human Services and Politics of the Middle East at George Washington University. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.