Research Group

Re-theorizing the Architecture of Housing as Grounds for Research and Practice

Re-theorizing the Architecture

[RG # 158] Re-theorizing the Architecture of Housing as Grounds for Research and Practice

September 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020

Organizers:

Yael Allweil (Technion Institute of Technology),
Gaia Caramellino (Politecnico di Milano)

Read More

Humanity is facing an ongoing, global housing crisis with major consequences for social stability in cities and nations, and by implication for the lives and health of millions. Theorization of the crisis in housing studies points to neo-liberalisation processes which have since the 1980s transferred responsibility for housing provision from the state to global markets, corporate monopolies, and the dwellers themselves, assigning architects little agency to develop new methodologies for housing as a cultural product. ‘Architecture’ as a cultural product is thus often seen as distinct from ‘housing’ as a socio-economic need.

The vision of this Research Group is therefore a new outlook on the development of the housing crisis and on architecture’s role in addressing it, by rethinking the terminology used to discuss housing, and by developing anew the vocabulary for researching and designing housing for the general public.

 

Read Less
av

Noah Hysler-Rubin

FELLOW
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Noah is affiliated with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests are: the history and theory of urban planning, colonial geographies, and town planning in Israel.
men

Jonathan Garb

FELLOW
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Jonathan is a professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests are modern Kabbalah, comparitive mysticism, mussar, and shamanism.
men

David Avnir

FELLOW
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
David is a professor in the Department of Organic Chemistry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
men

Spiros Skourtis

FELLOW
University of Cyprus

Department of Physics
University of Cyprus, Cyprus

Reaffirming Einstein's Legacy: Israeli-Led Team Discovers Milky Way's Heaviest Black Hole

Reaffirming Einstein's Legacy: Israeli-Led Team Discovers Milky Way's Heaviest Black Hole

1 May, 2024

 

Professor Tsevi Mazeh, a former fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and organizer of the "Big Data and Planets" research group, has been awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in the field of physics research for 2024. This esteemed recognition comes in light of his significant contributions to the discovery of the Milky Way's second-largest known black hole.

men

Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi

FELLOW
École Pratique des Hautes Études
Rainer Brunner is a professor at École Pratique des Hautes Études.

Behavioral Ethics Meets Corporate Governance: Paradigm Shift?

chess

 

Configure

 

[RG # 164] Behavioral Ethics Meets Corporate Governance: Paradigm Shift?

September 1, 2020 – June 30, 2021

Organizer:

Adi Libson (Bar-Ilan University)

Read More

 

Research Group Assistant: Barak Or

 

Over the last few years, there has been a growing academic interest in the field of behavioral ethics: people’s ethical biases in decision making. This scholarship has focused on the behavioral mechanisms that explain why ordinary unethicality is so common among people who view themselves as law-abiding individuals.

A recently published book by Professor Yuval Feldman (2008) systematically explored the far-reaching implications of this literature to the legal field: Instead of assuming that its primary target are "bad people" which the law must deter from maximizing their own self-interest, the law should aim to address "good people." These changes require a better understanding of the mechanisms which cause good people to do wrong. Better understanding will also lead to better ways of addressing this problem, by designing the situation in ways which would reduce people’s unethicality, such as verifying they have fewer justifications to behave unethically or ensuring they have a clear view of who are they harming.

The proposed research is aimed at examining the interaction of the behavioral ethics literature with the legal field which provides the most fertile ground for its acceptance: corporate law and governance. The corporate context serves as a 'perfect storm' combining and exacerbating several aspects emphasized in the behavioral ethics literature that lead individuals to act wrongly, such as doing things for the benefit of others, diffusion of responsibility, remoteness of the victim and contagiousness.

Furthermore, addressing the issue of conflict-of-interests and agency problems is central to the field of corporate law. As such, the understanding that a central way for curbing conflicts-of-interest is by increasing the saliency of the conflict-of-interest in the eyes of the agent may have far-reaching implications in the realm of corporate law and completely alter the arsenal of its tools. In many instances, such an analysis may reach opposite conclusions to that of the conventional law and economics framework on the effectiveness of certain instruments in curbing conflict-of-interest problems. Are independent directors an effective tool for monitoring conflicts-of-interests? How significant should be the role of fiduciary duties in dealing with the agency problem? What effects does the group dynamics of boards have on the monitoring of conflict-of-interests? Two types of implications of behavioral ethics on corporate governance will be examined: structural implications and procedural implications.

The central goal of the group is to facilitate a reciprocal engagement: examining the possible contribution of behavioral ethics to the corporate governance literature and the contribution of corporate governance to the organizational psychology literature. Behavioral ethics has many potential implications for corporate governance and can yield various feasible policy applications. Legal corporate scholars can also contribute to behavioral ethics scholars, by providing real-world contexts and suggesting additional experiments which can validate experimental findings in the field of behavioral ethics. This is an important contribution to the behavioral ethics literature, which faces a serious challenge concerning the extent of its external validity.

 

Read Less
fellow

Eve-Marie Becker

FELLOW
Aarhus University

Eve-Marie is a professor in the Department of Theology at Aarhus University. Her research interests are: Pauline studies, especially Philippians, investigation of Paul’s biography and personality; early Christian literary history.

men

Daniel Lee

FELLOW
University of Pennsylvania
Daniel is a professor in the Department of Electrical and System Engineering at University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are computational neuroscience models.
av

Vivian Mann

FELLOW
The Jewish Museum/ Jewish Theological Seminary
Vivian is affiliated with the Jewish Museum, New York, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her research interests are Jewish ceremonial art and medieval art.