Dr. Michal Pagis

Michal Pagis is a senior lecturer at the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar -Ilan University, Israel. She received her B.Sc. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and her MA and PhD from the department of Sociology, University of Chicago. Her fields of expertise include micro-sociology, sociology of culture and sociology of religion. She studies the growing popularity of techniques of self-formation and transformation in post-industrial culture, specializing in social spheres where religion, spiritually and popular psychology meet. Her different research projects include: contemporary meditation practice, life coaching, self-branding, and spiritual care. Her work is based on qualitative research methods (participant observation and in-depth interviews) that uncover the social dynamic that construct identities, ideologies and social practices that are at the base of contemporary social and cultural structures. She if the author of: “Inward: Vipassana meditation and the Embodiment of the Self” (2019) published at the University of Chicago Press. She currently studies the flourishing popularity of popular-psychology workshops and services among Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel with the help of an ISF grant (Israeli Science Foundation).