Erella Grassiani is an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. She studies the Israeli security industry and its effects on human rights worldwide. She also works nationalist militias and social movements in Israel and she studies the politics of trees in her project on arboreal nationalism. In the past she has done extensive research on the Israeli military and published a book on the topic: Soldiering under Occupation processes of Numbing among Israeli soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2013 Berghahn Books). She is the co-editor of Security Blurs: The Politics of Plural Security Provision (2019 Routledge). She further is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Conflict and Society: Advances in Research (Berghahn).

Administrative role

• Member of Workscouncil FMG and vice-chair of Central Workscouncil (COR) 

Other links 

• Moving Matters programme group

Research methods

• Qualitative methods
• Ethnography
• Ethics
• Fieldwork in violent settings

Current research projects

• Political Trees: This anthropological study looks at trees as political tools and  analyses how humans turn trees into political tools and harness ecological concerns to political goals.
• The New Guard: This study investigates the Israeli organization ‘The New Guard’, which promotes agriculture volunteering and offers security services to farmers as a neo-nationalist actor in the political landscape of Israel.
   

Courses

• BA anthropology: Ethnography and Academic Writing