Oren Yiftachel

Oren Yiftachel (Hebrew: אורן יפתחאל‎‎, born 1956) is an Israeli professor specializing in political geography. He lives in Beersheba and teaches political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in that city.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Yiftachel studied in Israel and Australia. In 1983, he received a Bachelor of Arts in Urban and Regional Studies (with distinction) from the Western Australian Institute of Technology in Perth, and in 1986 a Post-Graduate Diploma in Urban and Regional Planning (with distinction) from same institution after it became Curtin University. In 1990, he received a Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Geography, the University of Western Australia, Perth, and the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.

He has subsequently taught in urban planning, geography, political science and Middle East departments, at various institutions, including: Curtin University, Australia; the Technion, Israel; the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and UC Berkeley, in the United States; the University of Cape Town, South Africa and the University of Venice, Italy. He was a research fellow at RMIT University, Melbourne; the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC; and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Jerusalem.