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The Team
Noga Tsur, PhD
Principal Investigator
Prof. Noga Tsur is a senior lecturer (tenured) at the School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University. Prof. Tsur has completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University, where she studied the close link between awareness to bodily and emotional signals. She has conducted three postdoctoral fellowships: in Ben Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, and Harvard University.
Prof. Noga Tsur is an Associate Professor (tenured) at the School of Social Work at Tel Aviv University. She serves as Head of the Master’s Program in Social Work and directs the Embodied Trauma and Pain Lab. She completed her PhD at Tel Aviv University, where she examined links between awareness of bodily and emotional signals, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral fellowships at Ben-Gurion University, Tel Aviv University, and Harvard University. Prof. Tsur serves on the editorial boards of European Journal of Psychotraumatology and Child Abuse & Neglect. Her teaching includes psychological trauma and trauma-informed care, family systems, statistics, advanced quantitative methods at the PhD level, and theories of social work practice.
Prof. Tsur’s research lies at the intersection of child maltreatment, traumatic stress, and biopsychosocial models of mental and physical health. By integrating these domains, her work seeks to clarify how interpersonal trauma shapes bodily perception, as well as acute and chronic pain. Her research employs a range of methodologies, including quantitative sensory testing (QST) of pain perception, dyadic psychobiological stress synchronization, and self-report measures.
Main interests:
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Trauma and interpersonal trauma
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Child maltreatment
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Pain (acute and chronic)
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Non-sucidal self-injury (NSSI)
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Posttraumatic orientation to bodily signals
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Pain personification
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Embodied empathy
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Intergenerational processes of posttraumatic orientation to bodily signals
Ada Talmon
Lab Manager
PhD Candidate
Research: Intergenerational transmission of post-traumatic perception of bodily signals and the role of bodily empathy.
Ada is a Ph.D. candidate in the lab, where she has provided supervision and guidance in experimental design, data collection, and analysis. Ada also leads several research projects within the lab, focusing on intergenerational health and pain following trauma, and on the development of body perception following child maltreatment.
Shani Shaked
PhD Candidate
Research: The relationship between child abuse to chronic pain later in life. Specifically, it explores whether traumatic memory processes, including sensory-laden pain memories and pain flashbacks, shape later pain perception through mechanisms such as central sensitization and predictive coding. The study integrates the Revised Dual Representation Theory with contemporary pain models to propose a memory-based pathway from early trauma to pain chronification
Batel Kirsh
PhD Candidate
Research: The relationship between peritraumatic pain experiences during childhood abuse and pain-related motivations for non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in adulthood, proposing that changes in pain perception constitute a central mediating mechanism in this relationship.
Oz Hamtzani
Postdoctoral Fellow
A licensed rehabilitation psychologist and neuropsychologist. His research focuse on the impact of parent-child relationships on pediatric chronic pain. In addition, investigating pediatric medical trauma and its influence on body perception.
Yael Hollander
PhD Candidate
Research:
Peri traumatic Differentiation of the Self: A New Conceptualization of Subjective Processes in Relational Trauma.
Rona Spigelman
PhD Candidate
Research: Body Differentiation: The Somatic Infrastructure of the Self in Complex Trauma
Eilam Barnea
Master's Student
Research: Child maltreatment and disintegration experiences in adulthood (dissociation and somatization): the moderating role of differentiation of the self.
Reut Tzadok Schwartz
Master's Student
Research: Dissociation and Attention Regulation Symptoms Following Trauma: The Moderating Role of Interoceptive Awareness.
Ofri Friman
Master's Student
Research: traumatic loss and chronic pain: The moderating role of memory processes.
Alona Keino
Master's Student
Research: The relationship between immigration during childhood and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) -The mediating role of negative orientation towards bodily signals.
Maya Zahavi
Master's Student
Research: examining the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and genital self-image, focusing on the mediating role of body orientation and body-related shame.
Marah Hejleh
Master's Student
Research: Do cultural differences between Arabs and Jews in Israel affect the relationship between childhood maltreatment and the development of chronic pain and negative pain personification in adulthood?
Taymaa Amer
Master's Student
Research: Trauma exposure and complex PTSD: The mediating role of negative orientation toward bodily signals in the context of traumatic memory processes.
Gal Marciano
Master's Student
Research: The Role of Moral Injury as a Moderator in the Relationship between Combat Trauma, Chronic Pain, and Pain Personification