Hagar Kotef

Hagar Kotef is a Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London. Her work critically examines the intersections of violence, belonging, and territorial attachments in settler colonial contexts, with particular focus on Israel/Palestine. She currently leads an ESRC-funded project on torture and bureaucracy in Israel/Palestine through collaboration with the Public Committee against Torture in Israel.

Professor Kotef's research explores how political belonging and territorial attachments are constructed in settler colonies, challenging conventional understandings by demonstrating how people develop attachment to space not despite violence but through violence. Her work spans early modern political thought, history of political thought, empire and colonialism, Palestine/Israel studies, postcolonial theory, and poststructuralism (particularly Foucault and Derrida).

Her scholarly contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards:

• C.B Macpherson Book Award
• Yale Ferguson Award
• Spitz Prize in Democratic Theory
• Honorable Mention, MESA Fatema Mernissi Book Award
• Honorable Mention, Sussex International Theory Prize
• Honorable Mention, IPS-ISA Book Award

Professor Kotef actively supervises PhD students working on diverse projects related to political theory and postcolonial studies. Her current supervisees include Taylor Kenzie Borowetz, Mesrob Kassemdjian, Anna E. Kensicki, and Barbara Schenkel. The ESRC-funded research project on torture bureaucracy represents significant grant support for her ongoing investigation into state violence mechanisms.

Her current project, 'Civic Infrastructures of Torture,' examines the array of state apparatuses and institutions implicated in sanctioning torture in Israel, analyzing torture as a political technology whose effects extend far beyond the torture chamber itself into broader social and political relations.