Ruppin Academic Center
Ruppin Academic Center (RAC) is one of the largest public colleges in Israel. It has come a long way since its establishment in 1949 as a training and management center for Israel's agricultural settlements, Kibbutzim and Moshavim. Today, after being accredited by the Council for Higher Education in 1979, the Center has become a leading college awarding undergraduate (BA., B.Sc.) and graduate (MA., M.B.A.) degrees, striving to cultivate a new generation of leaders who possess moral conscience, social involvement and environmental awareness. RAC is consistently awarded the top rating in satisfaction surveys carried out among Israel's general student population. Its main goal is to be a leading, innovative, socially committed academic institution regionally and nationally. RAC has raised two central banners - utilization of the sea as a powerful source of economic development and research and study of immigration and social integration in response to Israel's largest social challenge.
The Institute for Immigration and Social Integration (IISI), established at RAC in 2005, is the only academic institute in Israel whose activities focus solely on these topics and is based on an understanding of the importance of multidisciplinary vision and activity. IISI operates to advance research and teaching in the field of immigration and social integration, training and professionalism of service providers, initiation and development of interventions in this field and dissemination of knowledge among policymakers, service providers, and the general public in Israel.
In 2008, RAC launched an MA program in Immigration and Social Integration, one of its kind in Israel. The program was developed in accordance with existing programs at universities around the world and has been accredited by the Israeli Council for Higher Education.
Dr. Nivi Dayan
Nivi Dayan is the head of DEMO at Ruppin. She is the director of the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration and teaches in the M.A. Program in Immigration and Social Integration. Her Ph.D. research focused on with health behavior of Ethiopian immigrant women in Israel. Prior to joining Ruppin, she served as a Senior Program Director at the Division of Immigrant Integration at American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC) - Israel. Nivi specializes in developing cross-cultural mediation programs and cultural competency in health and welfare services.
Prof. Karin Amit
Karin Amit is an Associate Professor at the Department of Business Administration at Ruppin Academic Center and the Head of the MA program of Immigration and Social Integration. She is the head of the Migration and Demography Section of the Israeli Sociological Association, and serves as a member of the Metropolis International Steering Committee. Karin's research interests are economic and social integration of immigrants, immigrants’ identity and sense of belonging, immigrant’s subjective well-being, involvement of social networks & leadership in the immigration decision making. Her recent studies focus on highly skilled migrants in Israel. Karin published many articles in international journals as well as professional and applied studies and reports.
Dr. Anat Avrahami Marom
Anat Avrahami Marom is a Lecturer at the Ruppin Academic Center, teaching a variety of methodological courses. She is also a researcher at the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration where she conducts applied evaluation studies with various groups of migrants. Anat is an expert in project-evaluation and provides research and evaluation expertise to the Ministry of Education as well to a numerous educational and social projects. She conducts the internal evaluation of DEMO.
Dr. Ravit Talmi Cohn
Ravit Talmi Cohn is a researcher at the Institute of Immigration and Social Integration. She is an anthropologist and teaches courses at the Ruppin Academic Center, Tel Aviv University and The Hebrew University. Her research focuses on the migration process from an anthropological point of view. Ravit’s Ph.D. research studied the immigration process of Ethiopian immigrant to Israel. Presently she is focusing on three areas: circular migration from and to Ethiopia, integration and education of French immigrant teenagers in Israel and mediation in cultural consulting for asylum seekers.
Dr. Pnina Dolberg
Pnina Dolberg is a Lecturer at the Department of Social Work. Her research focuses on immigrants, older adulthood and older immigrants. She is particularly interested in life stories of immigrants from different generations (1st, 1.5, 2nd and 3rd) and immigrants who migrated during different life stages.
Dr. Svetalana Chachashvili-Bolotin
Svetlana Chachashvili-Bolotin is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Community and Social Sciences. Her main areas of research include migration and education, as well as economic and social integration of immigrants. Svetlana published many professional articles in international journals and her long-term goal is to strengthen the connections between the academy and practice. In early 2011, she founded the Research Department at the Education Division of the Municipality of Ashdod and headed this division.
Ms. Anda Barak Bianco
Anda Barak Bianco is an economist who is about to complete her Ph.D. dissertation on livelihood strategies of asylum seekers with liminal legality. Her primary area of interest is the daily life of immigrants with precarious status. Anda brings together the micro level of analysis with the macro level in order to present the complex and multi-dimensional existence of the studied population. She is the administrator of DEMO in Ruppin.
Dr. Barbara Rosenstein
Barbara Rosenstein is the external evaluator of DEMO. She taught Theory of Evaluation and Ethics in Evaluation at Ben Gurion University of the Negev and has published articles on teaching evaluation, evaluation capacity building, reflective thinking, evaluation and social justice and evaluation method. As a founding member and the current chairperson of the Israeli Association for Program Evaluation (IAPE), Barbara was on the first board of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE). She is currently the external evaluator for two other international projects.