Michal Elgavi is a doctoral student at the School of Education. She is an industrial designer, an Avni Institute of Art and Design graduate, and holds a B.A. in Humanities from The Open University of Israel, and an M.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Michal studies the everyday and the taken-for-granted, the relationship between humans and the material objects around them, and how matter influences parenting experiences.
Michal's doctoral dissertation, supervised by Professor Eviatar Zerubavel from Rutgers University and Dr. Lauren Erdreich from the School of Education at HUJI, focuses on studying toys as cultural and social concepts that maintain their identity (even if in different manifestations of role, material, and function) across various systems of relationships and among multiple actors. Her dissertation will examine the meaning of toys for society, from how different values are embedded in toy design to how parents and society interpret these values. The study shifts the conventional analytical lens of toy research from children to adults, focusing on how toys shape and are shaped by society and culture.