Dr. Jenia Gutman

Dr. Jenia Gutman is the founding director of the Man & Nature: Research, Design, and Application platform, a joint project by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Ramat Hanadiv. In the last decade she has fulfilled senior administrative and staff positions in the public sector, where she spearheaded strategic and innovation processes in land, water and climate management in Israel. Her work combines broad institutional experience with an academic-critical perspective. She led the development and assimilation of Israel’s basin policy, wrote its theoretical basis, and developed design tools to make climate and greenhouse gas emission information accessible. Dr. Gutman has an MA in Urban Design from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Ben Gurion University. She served as a director on the Israel Petroleum Council. Alongside her institutional work she is a veteran environmental activist (formerly head of the Green Course student chapter and founder of the Hofshishi free Friday market). Today she represents Israel at the EU’s COST initiative and publishes articles combining philosophy and rivers, poetry and drainage systems, and urban typologies and energy independence.

At the VLJI Dr. Gutman is developing the fundamental questions of the man-nature relationship in the anthropocene and translating the ideas at the basis of that relationship into application through research, design and place-based practice.