Dr. Rony Margalit is a Research Fellow at the Digital Humanities and Social Sciences Hub at the Open University of Israel. Her field of research is Intellectual history. She completed her PhD at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University, where her research focused on the usage of myths to construct modern societies. Margalit's research explores the construction and evolution of American myths, with a primary focus on the Statue of Liberty. Her focus is on the statue transition from a national monument to a symbol of immigration to shape migration policy, analyzing the shift through the lenses of visual arts, cinema, poems, plays and literature. Her work frequently examines the intersection of Quaternity Idea and historical narratives of symbols to shape collective identity.
Selected publication:
Margalit, R. (2025). "The Mother of Exiles and Her Immigrant Children: Designing the Statue of Liberty as an American Immigration Symbol," in Judaism, Sovereignty and Human Rights, Issue 9-10, pp. 81-105.