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David Newman is a geographer and political scientist, specializing in the study of Geopolitics and Borders. he is currently a professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University in Israel, a department he founded in 1997. Newman was born and educated in the UK, with degrees from the University of London (B.A., Queen Mary College, 1978) and the University of Durham (Ph.D, 1981). Since 1998, Newman has been the co-editor of the journal, Geopolitics, a peer reviewed quarterly academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. His co-editor is John A. Agnew of UCLA. Newman also helped found the Centre for the Study of European Politics and Society at Ben Gurion University, together with Joel Peters, and he continues to serve as the chairperson of the Centre's Steering Committee.

Newman's academic work concentrates on the territorial dimensions of ethnic conflict and peace making, with a special focus on the channging roles and significances of borders and boundaries in a so-called borderless world. He has contributed widely to the growing multi disciplinary discourse on borders which has emerged during the past decade. Key papers on this topic appeared in the journal, Progress in Human Geography, one of them co-authored with border scholar, Anssi Paasi from the University of Oulu, Finland.

Newman also works on the territorial dimensions of the Israel-Palestine conflict, with a specific focus on the West Bank, the Green Line border and the impact of settlement policy in the Occupied Territories, as spearheaded by the Gush Emunim movement - the subject of his Ph.D thesis, and to which he has constantly returned and revisited. Newman has been active in pro-peace oprganizations within Israel, and is an active participant in various Track II meetings of Israeli and Palestinian scholars and public figures.

Newman has lived in Israel since 1982, with visiting professor positions at Canadian Universitieis (Calgary, York) in the 1990's, and UK universities (Bristol, London) in the 2000's.

During the 1990's, Newman undertook collaborative geopolitical research on Israel / Palestine with the Arab geographer, Ghazi Falah, following which a number of joint papers were published, as well as a critique of the problems of undertaking joint research of this nature.

From 1997-2003, Newman published a weekly opinion column in the Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, but was eventually unceremoniously removed from this position by the right wing editor and owners, owing to the left of centre political sentiments of his columns. he has also published opinion columns in many international newspapers, including a number of columns on border and Israel / palestine issues in the New York Times.

Most recently Newman has been involved in the debate surrounding the proposed academic boycott of Israeli universitieis by a radical group of British academics, members of the UCU academic union.