Dr David Borabeck

David Borabeck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies. His research focuses on the relations between nationalism, colonialism, religion, and ethnicity. In his dissertation, Borabeck examined the unique role of religion in the solidification of the Jewish-Israeli national collective and Zionist nation-building. Borabeck illustrates the uniqueness of this role as demonstrated by the activity of the Israeli Ministry of Religious Affairs in the first decades of the state.

Borabeck's current study focus on the relations between sovereignty and sanctity in Israel/Palestine. His intention is to explore the triple relationship between religion, ethnicity, and nationalism through the recontextualization of sacredness and sacred places in Israel in relation to the sovereign state. He does so through a spatial analysis of Jewish and Muslim sacred sites in Israel and the West Bank.

During his graduate studies in the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, Borabeck received the Rottenstreich Fellowship for Outstanding Doctoral Students awarded by The Council for Higher Education of Israel, as well as a stipend from the Study of Modern Jewish Culture I-Core research group, and a faculty scholarship from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Additionally, Borabeck was a Doctorate fellow at Center for the Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters in Ben Gurion University and a postdoctoral fellow at the Haifa Laboratory for Religious Studies in Haifa University, Israel.