Yonatan Levi is a PhD candidate researching democratic backsliding and the social movements fighting against it. His doctoral project offers an in-depth analysis of the crisis of democracy in Israel – examining not only the actions of its increasingly authoritarian government, but also the responses of the opposition, both in parliament and in the streets. A central theme of the project is the role that national security issues – above all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – play in shaping the Israeli variant of right-wing populism.

Alongside his academic work, Yonatan is heavily involved in public outreach. Over the past two years, he has delivered more than 150 public lectures on the crisis of democracy. In addition, he co-authored a short book about democratic backsliding, which sold tens of thousands of copies in Israel and influenced public debate in the country. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a journalist for a leading newspaper and a researcher for a Jerusalem-based think tank. In 2011, Yonatan was one of the leaders of the Israeli social justice protest movement – at the time, the largest civic mobilisation in the country’s history. In 2016, he worked as a researcher in the British Parliament.

Yonatan is a recipient of the British Foreign Office’s Chevening Scholarship for students with outstanding leadership qualities. He is a research fellow at Molad – The Centre for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy, and currently serves as co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Legal Populism, forthcoming in 2026. His writing has appeared in various media outlets, including The Guardian, Haaretz, and Contemporary Politics.

Yonatan holds an MSc in Political Theory from the London School of Economics and a BA in History and Literature from Tel Aviv University.

Academic Supervisors

Professor Jonathan White and Dr Abby Innes