clara sabbagh

Prof. Clara Sabbagh

Prof. Clara Sabbagh

Department of Leadership and Policy in Education

University of Haifa

csabbagh@edu.haifa.ac.il

Clara Sabbagh (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Hebrew University of Jerusalem) was born and raised in Guatemala and have been living and working in Israel since 1972. A sociologist of education by training, she is currently lecturing and chair the M.A. and Ph.D. programs at the Department of Leadership & Policy in Education (Programme for Education, Culture and Society) at the University of Haifa. She also served as President of the Social Psychology Research Committee (RC42), International Sociological Association (ISA) and is associate editor for the journal Social Justice Research.  In the past she served as president (2010-2012) of the International Society for Justice Research (ISJR). 

At the heart of Sabbagh's work lies an ongoing inquiry into key aspects of conceptions of social justice that underlie the basic structure of society. Much of her scientific activity focuses on young people's evaluations of the ways different kinds of resources are and should be distributed in society. Her research on this topic is constituted by four main areas: First, she has developed a theoretical framework that accommodates both etic (structural) and emic (culture-bound) approaches to social justice judgments. Second, her work investigates the ways in which social justice judgments are related to conceptions of other key societal issues such as social welfare, environmentalism and relationships between generations. Third, she explores how social justice judgments are expressed in various social spheres, especially in the realm of education and the family. Finally, Sabbagh's work delves into patterns of continuity and change of social justice judgments in the Israeli society.

Sabbagh's work has appeared in journals such as Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Justice Research, Journal of Social Policy, Acta Sociologica, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology and other edited volumes. She teaches undergraduate, graduate courses and seminars in sociology of education, informal education, justice in education and justice in the family.