Dr. Shahar is a senior lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Haifa. His primary areas of specialization are social anthropology and social history of the modern Middle East. He is trained both as a historian and an anthropologist, and his research combines these two disciplines, focusing especially on the Palestinian society and the legal sphere of Muslim societies.

Dr. Shahar teaches classes on the Palestinian minority in Israel; anthropology and social history of the modern Middle East; Islamic law; legal pluralism in Muslim societies; and Medieval and modern Egypt.

Recent publications by Dr. Shahar include:  Legal Pluralism in the Holy Coty: Competing Courts, Forum Shopping and Institutional Dynamics in Jerusalem  (Ashgate, 2015); “Between books and politics: Cairo International Book Fair as a field configuring event.” History and Anthropology 28, 2 (2017): 166-182; The Villages of the Fayyum: A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt (2018, with Prof. Yossi Rapoport);  “A New Look at the Agency of Qāḍīs: Israeli Sharīʿa Courts as a Case Study.” Die Welt des Islams 59,1 (2019): 70-98.

For a short video depicting my academic interest, click here: http://vod1.haifa.ac.il/vmix/106-2035/Ido_Shahar.mp4