Areas of Expertise:
• Israeli politics and government
• Voting trends and elections
• Public opinion
• Nationalism
• Jewish-Arab relations
• Identity politics
• Israeli society

Liron Lavi was a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2017 from Tel-Aviv University, where she studied the role of time in elections and democracy in Israel. During her doctoral research, Liron was also a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the Y&S Nazarian Center and UCLA's Department of Political Science from 2015 to 2017. Her doctoral work earned her the Best Dissertation Award from the Israeli Political Science Association in May 2018.

Liron's research interests include Israeli politics; elections and democracy, representation, and national identity. Her current work focuses on the 2019-2021 Israeli elections and the 2016 U.S. elections as she studies how citizens perceive their political representation and its effect on democracy. Liron is the recipient of the 2013 Warren E. Miller Scholarship and the Faculty of Social Science Dean Excellence Award in 2007, 2010, and 2013. Her research has been presented in international meetings including the Israeli, the Midwest and the American Political Science Association and published in top academic journals, including Journal of Communication, Political Studies, and Nations and Nationalism.

During Spring Quarter 2021, Liron is teaching Poli Sci 139 – Special Studies in International Relations: Populism, Polarization, and Crisis of Representation: Israeli Politics as Case Study of Global Trends.

She is co-founder and managing editor of the Y&S Nazarian Center's Currents: Briefs on Contemporary Israel - a bi-annual series comprised of short and informative analyses that explore pressing issues and emerging trends in Israel. The briefs cover a wide range of topics, including (but not limited to) politics, foreign policy, security, economy, culture, and society.