Oren Yiftachel  Oren Yiftachel (, born 1956) is an Israeli professor of political and legal geography, urban studies and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba. He holds the Lynn and Lloyd Hurst Family Chair in Urban Studies. Yiftachel was born in Haifa and grew up on kibbutz Matzuva. During the 1980s and early 1990s, Yiftachel studied in Australia and Israel, specializing in urban studies and political geography. In 1990, he received a Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Geography, the University of Western Australia, Perth, and the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa. He returned to Israel, where he did his post-doctoral studies on regional planning at the Technion, Haifa. He has subsequently taught urban planning, geography, political science and Middle East departments, at various institutions, including: Curtin University, Australia; the Technion, Israel; the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and UC Berkeley, in the United States; the University of Cape Town, South Africa and the University of Venice, Italy. Most recently, he was appointed as a visiting professor at RMIT University, Melbourne; and as a Leverhulme professor at University College London (Geography and the Bartlett). He was also a research fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC; and the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Jerusalem. Yiftachel is the founding and past editor of the journal, ", and has serves on the editorial board of "Planning Theory", "IJMES", "MERIP", "Urban Studies", "Journal of Planning Literature", "Environment and Planning A", and "Territory, Politics, Governance". Yiftachel has worked as an urban and regional planner in a range of institutions, including the Perth City Council in Australia, the Kibbutz Movement and "Israel 2020" project in Israel. He specialized in advocacy planning and land consultancy. Recently he has worked on an Israeli-Palestinian plan for a bi-national Jerusalem, an alternative plan for the unrecognized Bedouin villages in southern Israel, and a plan for a multicultural Beersheba. Yiftachel has worked as an urban and regional planner in a range of institutions, including the Perth City Council, the Kibbutz Movement, and "Israel 2020" project in Israel. Yiftachel is also an activist, and has been a member of several notable organizations, including Faculty for Israel-Palestine Peace (FFIPP), PALISAD, The Negev Coexistence Forum, Adva (centre for social equality), and Habitat International Coalition.