Dr Netta Cohen

BA, MA (Tel Aviv University); DPhil (University of Oxford)

I completed my doctoral degree in 2019 at the Centre for History of Science, Medicine and Technology, the University of Oxford. In the course of my doctoral studies, I received several scholarships and fellowships, including the Oxford-Pears Foundation Scholarship, the Leo Baeck scholarship, the graduate research fellowship at the Center for Jewish History in New York City, and a research affiliation at the Taub Center for Israel Studies in NYU. In 2018 I co-founded the Oxford Environmental History Network (OEHN) which aims to connect researchers working on environmental history at the University of Oxford. Since 2021 I am also heading the online international research group Jewish European Environmental History (sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute).

I teach European and World History: Imperial and Global History 1750-1930; Introduction to Environmental History; The Authority of Nature: Race, Heredity, and Crime from the 18th to the 20th Century; and History and Methodology.

My research focuses on Environmental History; History of Knowledge; History of Science, Medicine and Technology; Modern Jewish History; History of Zionism; Global and Colonial History; and Transnational History. 

New Under the Sun: Zionist Encounters with the Climate in Palestine (Berkley, California: the University of California Press), 2024.

“Shades of White: African Climate and Jewish European Bodies, 1903–1905”, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 50 (2), 2022, 298–316.

“Changing Climates: Zionist Medical Climatology in Palestine, 1897–1948”, Jews and Science, (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press), 2022, 205-228.

“Memories of a Zoologist: Reflections on the Role of the Archive in the Production of Knowledge and Memory”, Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook, 17 (2018), 313–334.