Prof. Larissa Remennick

Larissa Remennick, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology and former Chair of the Department. She joined Bar-Ilan faculty in 1994, a few years after her immigration to Israel from Moscow. Prof. Remennick received her Ph.D.in Demography and Sociology of Health in 1988 from the Institute of Sociology in Moscow and then worked as post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University in England. Her work in Russia focused on the social aspects of women's health and fertility, including reproductive cancers and family planning (e.g., reasons for high abortion rates). After moving to Israel in 1991, Larissa continued her former line of work in Medical Sociology (with the new focus on Israeli reproductive politics and assisted reproductive technologies), but also added new interests in immigration and migrant integration. Over the last 20 years, Prof. Remennick has conducted and published multiple studies on the various aspects of former Soviet immigration to Israel, including health and well-being, gender and family dynamics, occupational mobility of immigrant professionals, language patterns, and cultural encounter between Russian Israelis and other Israeli 'tribes'. She has also studied ex-Soviet immigration comparatively, i.e. looking at the integration patterns of Russian-speaking Jews in Israel and in the Western countries, and the formation of the global Russian-Jewish diaspora. Larissa has published three books in Russian and three books in English, as well as about 150 book chapters and articles in the major journals in the areas of health, gender, immigration, ethnicity, and Jewish studies. Her book "Russian Jews on Three Continents: Identity, Integration, and Conflict" (Transaction, 2007, 2012) has become a common reference in the field. Stanford Citation Index (2021) included Prof. Remennick in the 2% of the most-cited social scientists in the world.