Dr. Yael Rimer-Cohen is a faculty member in the Law Faculty at the Hebrew University and holds the Landecker-Feinberg Lectureship for the Study of Individual and Group Rights. She earned her academic degrees - a B.A. in sociology and Ph.D. in law - at the Hebrew University and had post-doctoral fellowships at the Safra Center for the Ethics in Tel-Aviv and Harvard Law School . In 2024, she was appointed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her publications—awarded both the Gorni and Public Law Association prices—explore the cross-sections of poverty and marginalized community with different legal systems, using critical theories and empirical methods. Specifically She is interested in participation, knowledge production and the way it is incorporated in law making across institutions and legal fields such as housing, social security, debt and child protection law.
In the framework of the “Rethinking Parenthood: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” research group, Dr. Rimer-Cohen will examine how law is shaped by- and shapes parental practices and perceptions. Since welfare law and specifically child protection law structures the state's deep intervention within the family unit, sometime severing the legal linkage between children and parents, it is vital to recognize and examine perceptions of 'good' or 'ideal' parents as they are reflected in the legal sphere, understood as the wide net of rules, texts, practices, expertise, institutions and actors operating under and around the law.