Dr Shana Cohen
- Affiliated Lecturer
- Director of Think Tank for Action on Social Change
Contact
About
Shana Cohen is an Affiliated Lecturer with the Department. Before coming to Cambridge, she was a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield and taught Human Services and Politics of the Middle East at George Washington University. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Shana Cohen has been engaged in both academic research and community-based work in Morocco, India, Egypt, Israel, England, and the US. Her research has focused on the transformation of the middle class and the politics of social action under neoliberalism, exploring how the constitution of identity intersects with economic insecurity and ideologies of human potential and social value. Shana's current writing and research projects reflect her practitioner and academic trajectories - the first project involves rethinking local management of resources to improve frontline service effectiveness and the second, how grassroots social action indicates the emergence of a new political consciousness controverting management models and allocation of resources based on commodification of human potential and vulnerability. She is also the PI (with Ed Kessler, the Executive Director of the Woolf Institute) on a comparative study of how the recession in Europe has affected trust between religious minorities in London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome.
Research
Research interests
- Politics and Inequality
Publications
Books
- Cohen, S. (2018). Transforming Social Action into Social Change. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
- Cohen, S. (2014). "Social Solidarity in Global Social Policy," Festschrift for Bob Deacon, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Journal Articles
- Cohen, S. (2014). "Neoliberalism and Academia in Morocco," British Journal of Middle East Studies, Special Issue on the Role of Intellectuals in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Ewan Stein.
- Cohen, S. (2014) 'Rediscovering the Social Imperative in Managing Public and Non-profit Social Services in Morocco', Special issue of Philosophy of Management on management in Africa, edited by David Lutz and Peter John Opio.
- Cohen, S., Deacon, B. (2011). "From the Global Politics of Poverty Alleviation to the Global Politics of Solidarity," Special issue of Global Social Policy, edited by Asun St Clair and Havard Haarstard, Vol 11, No 1/2.
Other
- Cohen, S. (2014) "The Politics of Social Action in Morocco," Midde East - Topics and Arguments, Special Issue on the Middle Class.
- Cohen, S. (2010). "What is the relationship between migration and social development?" Migration in the Arab World, Washington, DC: Middle East Institute.