Michael Shalev is Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and will be a Visiting Professor at the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies in Winter 2018. During his time at UCLA, Shalev will teach two courses, including "From Statism to Neoliberalism: The Changing Political Economy of Israel in Comparative Perspective" and "Social Divisions and Political Conflict: Israel in Comparative Perspective."

Over his career Shalev has had two main interests: the comparative political economy of rich democracies and the politics and political economy of Israel. His research focuses on the question of how and why “encompassing” protests partially manage to overcome the political and social cleavages that normally prevent broadly-based solidarity from emerging in protests. His investigations include (1) studies of the economic grievances that underpinned the Israeli protest; (2) a comparative analysis, based on surveys in Spain and Israel, of support and participation in the 2011 movements; and (3) an ongoing study using unique “big data” derived from mobile phones to probe patterns of protest participation in Israel across time and space.