The evolution of LGBT research in Israel

This meta-analysis constitutes an attempt at mapping LGBT research in Israel with respect to its evolution and distribution of various attributes. Due to the relatively small size of Israel, it is possible to aggregate the entire catalogue of academic studies carried out within this field. The corpus includes all scholarly works (n=586) published about LGBT people and/or related issues in Israel between 1942 and 2018. Several aspects were critically examined: historical trajectories and distributions of languages, disciplines, topics, genres, researched populations and authors. This meta-analysis sheds light on how changes in the social sphere paved the way for the sudden growth in this field and how other macro-level phenomena affected various aspects of the field. The evolution of LGBT studies in Israel is characterized, inter alia, by a spiral movement that was driven by a nucleus of pioneering scholars who have been paving the way for others.