Prof. Michal Ben-Shachar, Head of the Interdisciplinary Studies Unit

Each of the study programs in this Unit feature an innovative and groundbreaking combination of different research approaches, fostering original and diverse thinking and bridging beyond the conventional faculty boundaries to generate synthesis and points of contact between knowledge, tools, and perspectives that have developed in parallel in the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities.

The Unit offers a variety of interdisciplinary study programs: Brain Sciences (undergraduate and advanced degrees), Gender Studies, Conflict Management, Resolution and Negotiation program, Hermeneutics and Culture Studies, and Science, Technology, and Society. The uniqueness of the Interdisciplinary Studies Unit is also evident in our community – a diverse, inquisitive, and involved community. The unique profiles of each of our faculty members combine many fields of knowledge and attract students characterized by boundary-breaking curiosity, an approach that enables synthesis and innovation through familiarity with different fields of knowledge, and an intellectual independence that allows for posing original and challenging research questions and finding their exceptional answers. Due to the sophisticated and diverse skills they have acquired, our graduates integrate into key positions in academia, economy, culture, and Israeli policy making.

Prof. Ben-Shachar, Head of the Unit, completed her master's and doctoral degrees at Tel Aviv University, and continued to a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. In 2008, Ben-Shachar joined the Gonda Brain Research Center and the Department of Linguistics and English Literature at Bar-Ilan University, as a senior faculty member. She served as Head of the Brain Science undergraduate program between 2018-2022 and is now a full professor at the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center.

Prof. Ben-Shachar is a world-renowned researcher in the neurobiology of language. Her research focuses on the neural basis of human language processing, particularly the role of brain connectivity in written and spoken language processing.

In 2018, she was elected to serve as the head of the program committee of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and as a board member of this society.

She is currently an Associate Editor of the journal Neurobiology of Language published by MIT Press. Her research on the neural basis of stuttering has been funded by the Israel Science Foundation and received the Rector's award for scientific inovation. Her research was further supported by grants from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation and from the European Union (Marie Curie grant for returning scientists). She was a member of the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Science funded by the Israel Science Foundation.

Prof. Ben-Shachar’s research has a distinctly interdisciplinary nature, combining advanced brain imaging tools with cognitive and psycholinguistic measures to examine scientific questions regarding the nature of uniquely human linguistic processes, such as decomposing a word into its components (morphemes) or mapping a spoken word to its written form.