Dr. Hodel Ophir

Dr. Hodel Ophir is a dance educator and scholar, working in the fields of dance studies, dance education, gender studies, the anthropology of the body, and performance studies. She holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an M.A. in Arts Education from the University of Leeds, and a B.Ed. and teaching certification from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.
Ophir’s doctoral research examined the work and lived experiences of dance teachers in Israel under conditions of late modernity. It was published, together with Yael (Yali) Nativ, as the book Fractured Freedom: Body, Gender, and Ideology in Dance Education in Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2016). Articles based on this research have appeared in leading academic journals, including Israeli Sociology, Megamot, and Anthropology & Education Quarterly.
Since 2013, Ophir has conducted research with Palestinian dance teachers and choreographers in Israel. This work has been supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the Pais Council for Culture and the Arts, and was published as a book titled Choreographing Social Change: Palestinian Dance Teachers and Choreographers in Israel (Resling, 2018). Additional publications from this research have appeared in Dance Research Journal, Arts, The New East, and the edited volume Moving Through Conflict: Dance and Politics in Israel (Routledge, 2020).
Ophir is a Senior Lecturer at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, where she teaches courses in the philosophy and sociology of education, with a particular focus on dance and music education; dance, body, and society; body, identity, and performance; qualitative research methods for graduate students; and pedagogical supervision for student teachers of dance and movement in elementary schools.