Dr Alice Gaya

Dr. Alice Gaya is an Academic Visitor at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, where she investigates digital identity expression among Muslim-Jewish mixed families in the UK and Israel. Under the mentorship of Prof. Yaacov Yadgar, she employs digital ethnography to explore how these families navigate religious and national belonging in transnational contexts, examining how social media platforms serve as spaces for identity negotiation and cultural synthesis.

Her background in social anthropology includes a PhD from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where her research on identity formation within Jewish-Arab mixed families in Israel was awarded the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research Award. She holds an MA in Sociology and Anthropology from Tel Aviv University, where she studied identity and belonging among South Sudanese refugees and asylum seekers. She was a research fellow at the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration at Ruppin Academic Center and part of Communities in Motion Lab at the Ben-Gurion Israel Studies Center (MALI) in Sde Boker.

Her research interests span the intersections of religion, nationalism, and ethnicity in contemporary society, with particular attention to digital religion, identity politics, and intercultural relations in both physical and digital spaces.