Prof. Dr. Ayelet Shachar
Former Director 2015-2020
Ayelet Shachar is Professor of Law, Political Science, and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, and the holder of the R.F. Harney Chair in Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies at the University of Toronto, where she directs the Harney Program at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. She was Director of the Department of Ethics, Law and Politics of the Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity from 2015 to 2020.
Previously, she held the Canada Research Chair in Citizenship and Multiculturalism. She is the author of Multicultural Jurisdictions: Cultural Differences and Women’s Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2001 & 2009)—winner of the American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Award; The Birthright Lottery: Citizenship and Global Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2009)— named 2010 International Ethics Notable Book in recognition of its “superior scholarship and contribution to the field of international ethics;” The Shifting Border: Legal Cartographies of Migration and Mobility (Critical Powers Series, Manchester University Press, 2020);, as well as close to 100 articles and book chapters published in leading social science and law journals. Shachar is also the lead editor of the field-defining Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2017 & 2020)
Shachar is the Founding Co-chair of the Max Planck Research Initiative on Migration, Integration, and Exclusion (total research budget: €3.7 million). She was a Fulbright Fellow at Yale, Emile Noël Senior Fellow at NYU, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and held distinguished visiting professorships at Stanford and Harvard. Shachar is the recipient of research excellence awards in Canada, Israel, Germany, and the United States. Beyond contributing to key scholarly debates, she has provided pro-bono consultation to judges, non-governmental organizations, the European Parliamentary Research Services, and the World Bank. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) - the highest academic accolade in that country, as well as a Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen). Most recently, she won the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize - the most prestigious research award in Germany.
Research projects
- Constituting citizens: oaths, gender, religious attire (completed)
- The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (completed)
- Shifting Borders of Justice: Territory, Market, Migration (completed)
- Spatial Statism (with Ran Hirschl)
- On “Golden Visas” and “Golden Passports”: The Marketization of Citizenship in an Age of Restrictionism (completed)
