Amos Lagzel successfully passes PhD candidacy examination

The People&Planet Lab is pleased to announce that our student Amos Lagzel has successfully passed his doctoral candidacy examination and is officially embarking on his PhD journey at the Technion. This significant milestone demonstrates Amos’s academic excellence and marks another important achievement for our laboratory’s growing doctoral program.
Amos’s dissertation, titled “Shaping Excellence: A Bourdieusian Analysis of the Development of Elite STEM Programs in Israel,” examines the evolution of two prominent Israeli STEM programs—Alpha and Odyssey—through the lens of Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory and Archer’s concept of science capital. His research employs qualitative methodology, including expert interviews and policy document analysis, to investigate the complex relationships between policy entrepreneurs and state institutions. The study reveals how these programs, while creating valuable opportunities for gifted students, simultaneously reproduce social inequalities despite their meritocratic aims. This work contributes significantly to understanding the tension between academic excellence and equity in educational policy, particularly within Israel’s unique geopolitical context.
The examination committee included researchers from Technion: Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari, Prof. Tali Tal, Prof. Miri Yemini.