Ruth Kark, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has written and edited twenty books and over 150 articles on the history and historical geography of Palestine and Israel. Her research interests include the study of concepts of land, land use and patterns of land ownership globally, with special focus on the Middle East and Palestine/Israel; urban and rural settlement processes; and Western interests in the Holy Land and interactions with its local populations, largely in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Her recent projects related to women and gender include the role of women in concepts of land and landownership in traditional and modern cultures. Among her writings on the topic of gender are Land-God-Women: Women, Land and Property in Traditional and Modern Societies—The Case of Africa and “Not a Suffragist”?: Rahel Yanait Ben-Zvi on Women and Gender. She is also an editor of Jewish Women in the Yishuv and Zionism: A Gender Outlook (2002).