Jones Meirav, Assistant Professor
Meirav Jones
Assistant Professor
CLA
Department of Religious Studies
Area(s) of Interest:
Biography
Dr. Meirav Jones received her PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2013 and she has since held research and teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Jones’ research examines the intersection between religion and political and legal thought, recovering religious roots of secular legal and political ideas, and critically approaching the secular establishment with a rethinking of the role of religion at its foundations. Her work has been published in such outlets as Journal of the History of Ideas, History of Political Thought, and Review of International Studies. Her current largescale project is a critical rethinking of Jewish sovereignty and Westphalian sovereignty, in tandem, towards a constructive contribution to post-sovereign thought that takes religion seriously.
Alongside her individual research, Dr. Jones is part of a binational and inter-religious research group at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, “Re-envisioning Jewish and Arab National Identities in Israel,” where her work on sovereignty takes part in conversations she hopes will affect public discourse and open new political horizons. In 2019-20 she was also a member of an interdisciplinary research group on “Theology and the Anthropocene,” to which she brought her historical and theoretical toolbox to work collaboratively on urgent contemporary questions.
Education
2007-2013 PhD, Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem “The Image of Israel and the Development of Political Ideas in England, 1640-1660” Advisors: Yaron Ezrahi (Political Science), Michael Heyd (History).
2005-2007 MA, Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
1996-2000 BA, Political Science and Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Research
Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Meirav Jones eds., Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought (Jerusalem, Shalem Press, 2008)
Meirav Jones, “Natural Law as True Law,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius,
Randall Lesaffer and Janne Nijman, eds. (Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming 2021)
Meirav Jones, “The Jewish State and the End of Democratic Judaism,” in Leonard Greenspoon ed., Studies in Jewish Civilization, Vol. 29: Is Judaism Democratic? (Purdue University Press, 2018)
Meirav Jones, “A Jewish Source of Modern Natural Law?” in Mizug Ofakim: Jewish and Israeli Political Thought, Dan Avnon and Dudi Feuchtwanger eds. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2016) [Hebrew].
Meirav Jones, “Introduction,” in Gordon Schochet, Fania Oz-Salzberger, Meirav Jones eds., Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought (Jerusalem, Shalem Press, 2008)
Meirav Jones, “Eruv,” Mafteakh: Lexical Review of Political Thought 14 (December, 2019)
Meirav Jones and Yossi Shain, “Modern Sovereignty and the Non-Christian, or Westphalia’s Jewish State” Review of International Studies 43:5 (December, 2017)
Meirav Jones, “My Highest Priority was to Absolve the Divine Laws,” The Theory and Politics of Hobbes’ Leviathan in a War of Religion,” Political Studies 65:1 (March, 2017)
Meirav Jones, “Philo Judaeus and Hugo Grotius' Modern Natural Law,” Journal of the History of Ideas 74:3 (July, 2013)