Professor Smadar Ben-Asher

Faculty Member

Professor Smadar Ben-Asher is an expert educational psychologist and a researcher of the social representation of minority groups who, within the public discourse, are fighting for their place in Israeli society. Her doctoral dissertation dealt with the internal dialogue of a minority group (the kibbutz society) that maintained functional patterns intended to preserve the group through conflict. Additional research dealt with the parents of Navy commando soldiers who fought their sons' battle against the health threat caused by diving in the polluted Kishon river; with the coping methods of settlers evicted from their homes in the Gaza Strip before and after implementation of the Disengagement Plan; with the group of Bedouin consultants who are required to blaze their professional trail in a traditional society; and with the liberal and republican streams in Israeli society and their attitudes toward the role of IDF widows in the preservation of national myths. Ben-Asher was the director of the educational psychological services in two local authorities and was the regional psychologist in the South at the time of the disengagement from Gaza. She is an adjunct lecturer in the educational psychology and counseling track at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and heads the MEd program in educational counseling at the Achva Academic College.