Daphna Canetti-Nisim

Daphna Canetti-Nisim, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she also obtained her PhD, studies religion and democracy in Israel. She focuses on extreme religious expressions, beliefs and behaviors and their potential harm to democratic values.

While many intuitively believe religion to be antidemocratic, her findings have not shown this to be the case. With other scholars, she speculates that authoritarianism, among other factors, may account for the negative association. Her current project, “Religion and Democracy: Friends or Foes?” concentrates on the interrelationship between manifestations of religiosity and support for the political aspects of democratic values.

While at Kellogg, Canetti-Nisim will use structural equation modeling to analyze four years of Israeli survey data and compare it to American data, as well as integrate her extensive research in religious studies and democratic theory and methodology. She plans to take advantage of the opportunity to be part of the Institute’s scholarly community to widen her knowledge of the relationship between religion and politics outside of Israel.