Prof. Shai Lavi is a faculty member of Tel Aviv University Law School. He is the director of The Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and a co-director of the Minerva Center for the interdisciplinary Study of End of Life. He is an expert in sociology of biotechnology, law and ethics. He has written, among other topics, on death and dying, reproductive technologies, and state and religion.
Prof. Lavi received his Ph.D. from the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, University of California Berkeley. His book The Modern Art of Dying: A History of Euthanasia in the United States (Princeton University Press) won the 2006 Distinguished Book Award in sociology of law from the American Sociological Association. He was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Berkeley, California, a visiting professor at Toronto University and at Cardozo Law School, and a Humboldt fellow at the Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig and at the faculty of law at the Humboldt University, Berlin. He is a member on the editorial board of two of the leading American journals in his field, Law and Society Review and Law, Culture and Humanities Journal. He is also a member of the National Helsinki Committee (IRB) for Medical Research in Israel.