Dr. Afnan Attrash-Najjar is a Senior Lecturer (since July 2025) at The Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University. Her research and teaching focus on child maltreatment, with a particular emphasis on child sexual abuse, peritraumatic responses to abuse, the prevention of child abuse, and the development of culturally sensitive intervention programs.
From October 2024 to October 2025, Dr. Attrash-Najjar is an Academic Visitor at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, where she is conducting her postdoctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Lucie Cluver. Her project—funded by the Haruv Institute and the Council for Higher Education—focuses on preventing child sexual abuse in the Palestinian community in Israel through participatory action research and a mixed-methods design. The study explores community-based prevention strategies, adaptation of evidence-based interventions, implementation, and evaluation in complex socio-political contexts.
At the University of Oxford, she is actively involved in the ParentProtect project— led by Prof. Lucie Cluver and colleagues— which seeks to prevent online technology-facilitated abuse and exploitation of children. She also contributes to ISPCAN’s HUDDLE international training program and is a member of the International Consortium of Professionals Protecting Children from Maltreatment during Crises. In addition, she leads ISPCAN’s pilot study on inter-sectoral collaborative responses to child sexual abuse in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Attrash-Najjar serves as guest editor for two special issues: Honouring Child and Youth Voices and Right to Participation in Child Protection Research and Practice (Child Protection & Practice journal), and Race, Ethnicity, and Child Maltreatment (International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy, and Practice). She is a recipient of a three-year competitive national Excellence Fellowship awarded to outstanding new faculty in Israel.
