About

Smadar Ben-Natan is a legal scholar of human rights, criminal justice, and armed conflict. She specializes in military law and incarceration in Israel/Palestine, penal regimes in the context of colonialism and conflict, and the legal profession.

Currently, she is an affiliate faculty in the Jackson School of International Studies, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, and a 2020-2022 Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar. She is currently writing a book manuscript titled Citizen-Enemies: Military Courts and the Construction of Citizenship in Israel/Palestine, and working on a second book project, The Carceral State in Conflict: Between Reconciliation and Radicalization.

Ben-Natan holds a Ph.D. in law from Tel Aviv University, a master’s in international human rights law from the University of Oxford, and an L.L.B. from Tel Aviv University. She was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and Harvard University, and a postdoctoral fellow in Israel Studies at the University of Washington. A longtime practicing lawyer of human rights and criminal defense in Israel and Palestine, litigating in military and civilian courts up to the Israeli Supreme Court, and an international expert on torture.