Political Science Seminar: Esther Lopatin

Dr. Esther Lopatin - Bio

Dr. Esther Lopatin, teaches at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University. She is also a faculty member at the Division of Foreign Languages at Tel Aviv University. She is an expert on the European Union, Germany, EU external relations, immigration and refugee policy. She received her Ph.D. (“The Development of EU Refugee and Asylum Policy”) in Political Science from the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich in 2004, for which she obtained a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service  (DAAD). From 2005 until 2010 she was a Professorial Lecturer at George Washington University’s Political Science Department, teaching courses on EU Politics and International Relations Theory, while also serving as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University (2005 to 2007). Prior to her graduation she worked as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) in Washington DC, where she provided policy advice on immigration and transatlantic cooperation (2003-2004). Upon her return to Israel in 2010, she was appointed manager of the European Program at the Center for European Studies at the Interdisciplinary Center, (IDC), Herzliya, and two years later she was appointed as the Director of the Center and served in this position until 2019.

In 2015 Dr. Lopatin was appointed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to the Board of Trustees of the German-Israeli Future Foundation Zukunftsforum, and in 2017 was invited by DAAD Germany to observe the German general election along with 20 other academic experts on Germany. Between 2014-2019 she was a Visiting Professor at Sciences Po. Lille and Sciences Po. Bordeaux, teaching courses on EU-Israel relations and the challenge of immigration and integration in Europe. In 2017 she was appointed as a co-leader in a Working Group by the European Commission Cost Program to develop new indicators that will help decision makers integrate immigrants and refugees into European society. In 2019 she participated in a research project financed by the European Commission about women and innovation. The main goal of this project was to develop practical suggestions on how to overcome obstacles that women face in establishing start-ups.

Dr. Lopatin is often interviewed by the media discussing current European affairs and in particular, Europe-German relations, EU-Israeli relations, EU external relations, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, immigration and refugee policy, and right wing extremism in Europe. In the last 10 years she has given more than 500 interviews to international and Israeli media (including American, German, French, Swiss and Italian media).