CV

Netta Cohen graduated from the Tel Aviv University in the department of History in 2009 and has obtained her M.A. degree in History (summa cum laude) from the Tel Aviv University in 2013. Her thesis project examined the environmental and climatic perceptions of Jewish architects in Palestine between the years 1909-1948 and the ways these informed their professional practice. Netta is interested in environmental history, colonial history and history of expertise and has a particular interest in the transfer of cultural knowledge and identities from Central Europe, and especially Germany, to Palestine (later the state of Israel) during the late 19th century and the 20th century.

 

Research Project

As a fellow of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem she is currently participating in two of the center's projects. Since January 2014 Netta is taking part in the research and arrangement of Heinrich Mendelssohn's estate in the Historical Archives of Tel Aviv University, a collaborative project of the German Literature Archive in Marbach (Germany) and the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center. Fascinated by the archival material found in Mendelssohn's collection, she has begun to examine together with Ray Schrire the multifold relations between environmental and national ideas in Israel during 1950-1970. The results of this investigation were presented in the conference "History of Environmental Movements and Development of Environmental Thought" held in Zagreb (Croatia) in September 2014.

In addition Netta is also coordinating the project Cultural Property and Restitution Documentation after 1945, a collaborative project of I-core/Daat Hamacom and the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center. The main goal of this project is to enhance accessibility and publicity of the variety of primary sources concerning Jewish cultural property which are located in Israeli archives, setting the ground for a more comprehensive and profound research.

 

Selected Publications

- Pride and Prejudice: The Israeli Architecture in the Eyes of Public Opinion and the Planning Authority 1948-1967, in: A-foria, ed. by Jeremy Hoffmann & Zvi Elhyani), Tel Aviv, forthcoming.