Oded Haklai
Professor | Director, Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity
He/Him
PhD (University of Toronto); MA (University of British Columbia); BA (Hebrew University)
Political Studies
Comparative Politics, International Relations
Professor
LECR - Laboratory for Ethnic Conflict Research
Mackintosh-Corry Hall, C431
Research Interests
Nationalism and ethnicity; state and majority-minority relations; politics of Israel; Palestinian-Israeli relations; settlers and territorial disputes; Democratic backsliding.
Supervisory Interests
Oded Haklai is interested in supervising graduate students in the areas of settlers (or population settlements) and territorial conflict; state-minority relations; democratic backsliding; Israeli politics.
Biography
Oded Haklai holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto (2004), an MA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (1999) and a BA from the Hebrew University. He is currently serving as the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity at Queen鈥檚. His research covers an array of issues in comparative and international politics, including nationalism and ethnic relations, the politics of settlers and territorial conflict, democratic decline, Israeli politics, and Israeli-Palestinian relations. His work has been published in leading journals, including Comparative Political Studies, International Studies Review, International Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Journal of Democracy. His book Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel (2011) was awarded the Shapiro Award for best book in Israel Studies. In addition, he has published 3 co-edited volumes on the impact of democratization and ethnic minorities, the politics of settlers in contested lands, and Israeli 鈥 Palestinian relations. Winner of several prestigious research grants, Haklai has held several visiting fellowships including at the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University, the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School, George Washington University, the Weatherhead Center at Harvard University, the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard, and the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis. In 2024, Haklai received an honorary appointment at Ben-Gurion University and was recipient of the Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ben-Gurion.
Haklai currently serves as the Vice President of the Association for Israel Studies and the editor of the journal Israel studies Review (since 2021). Since 2025, he has also been serving as Treasurer of the Nationalism and Politics section in the American Political Science Association.
Teaching
For detailed information about political studies courses and instructors, please refer to the Undergraduate and Graduate pages.
Selected Publications
. Co-edited with Neophytos Loizides (Stanford University Press, 2015).
. Co-edited with Miriam F. Elman and Hendrik Spruyt (Syracuse University Press, 2014).
, co-edited with Jacques Bertrand (Routledge, 2013)
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
Winner of the 2012 Shapiro Award from the Association for Israel Studies
鈥淭he Effects of Population Settlements and Territorial Labeling on Domestic Audience: Evidence from Israeli Settlements in the West Bank,鈥 Journal of Peace Research (2026) (with Anna Zhang)
鈥淎partheid: A Quest for Conceptual Clarity鈥欌 International Affairs (2026) (with Meghan Garrity)
鈥淭he Trump Effect on Global Autocratization: Theory and Evidence from Israel and T眉rkiye,鈥 Middle East Journal 79: 2 (2026). (with Evren Balta and Andrew O鈥橠onohue)
鈥淚s Israel Losing Its Last Democratic Safeguard?鈥 Journal of Democracy Online Exclusive, November 2024. (With Andrew O鈥橠onohue)
鈥淪pokes of Regime Change in Israel,鈥 Israel Studies Review 39: 1 (2024).
鈥淪ettlers and Territorial Control.鈥 In the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies (Oxford University Press, 2022) 24pp.
鈥淭he Fourth Phase of Palestinian Arab Politics in Israel: The Centripetal Turn,鈥 Israel Studies (with Rida Abu Rass) 27: 1 (2022).