Irus Braverman is a professor of law and an adjunct professor of geography at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York (SUNY), where she teaches wildlife and biodiversity law, law and genetics, Israel/Palestine environmental justice issues, and topics related to law and animals. Her main interests lie in the interdisciplinary study of law, geography, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Writing within this nexus, Braverman has conducted ethnographic research on illegal houses, trees, checkpoints, public toilets, and zoos, among other sites. Braverman has written several books, covering issues from the bureaucracy that fostered and facilitated the construction of discriminatory urban landscapes in East Jerusalem, and how trees are employed in the struggle over land and identity in Israel/Palestine, to the complexities of managing zoo animals, and the intensifying management of imperiled species in wild nature.

At the time of her fellowship, Irus worked on the monograph Blue Legalities: The Life & Laws of the Sea (Duke University Press, 2020). Braverman’s edited collections include The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography (coedited) (Stanford University Press, 2014), Animals, Biopolitics, Law: Lively Legalities (Routledge, 2016), and Ocean Legalities: The Law and Life of the Sea (Duke University Press, forthcoming).